Collecting and Organizing the Influencing Factors of Team Communications to Handle Nuclear Power Plant Emergencies

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The approach taken to undertaken the research based on mining is interesting and allows a number of common themes to be drawn, however the applicability to a Nuclear Emergency are at times questionable. I would have also expected to see much more around Human Factors and how this avoids the communication errors built into the research.

Communication or Discipline is also at the bottom of the Hierarchy of Controls. In reality you should design the MCR to avoid operator error even in high stress emergency situations. Credit should be given to this in the introduction.

Two major factors that seem to have been missed specifically related to Communication are:

- At current the research takes no credit of the role of the Emergency Command Centre and assurance model. This helps provide a degree of advice and assurance to the Operator in the decisions they make and often have access to the data from the MCR. This helps improve communication and reduces the opportunity for error.

- Emergency Management System - In the event of an Emergency Management System gets established. This is robustly practiced such that scenarios such as those related to poor communication are picked up and addressed.

Overall I am unsure how much the output of this study really adds.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear authors,

The authors’ manuscript was a report on the importance of communication in emergency situations to operators in the main control room of a nuclear power plant. The authors’ research methodology involved a careful review of previous articles using the PRISMA method and text mining. Through the peer review, I was impressed by the considerable time and effort the authors have put into identifying communication in emergency situations. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the authors for allowing me to review their manuscript.

However, the author’s manuscript is rejected due to several major issues, as described below. The authors wish to significantly improve their manuscript and resubmit it anew.

 

1) The logic of the authors’ study was unclear

The authors prove communication of emergency situations in nuclear power plants, but it is unclear how the results were linked to emergencies, as the main description is normal communication.

2) The rationale for the distinction between “Elements” and “Sub-elements” was unclear.

Regarding the “5 elements: situational, decision-making, team, individual, and organizational elements”, did these distinctions match the proof of communication in emergency situations? These were the categories related to decision-making in reference 28 of your manuscript, and a novel category should have been devised for the authors’ report.

In addition, the authors’ results show that the text mining results did not match the “Elements” and “Sub-elements” of the articles extracted by the PRISMA method. For example, Topic 2 appeared in both Elements 2 and Elements 4 in the text mining. The basis for the distinction between “Elements” and “Sub-elements” was therefore very discrepant. That’s why this is the mismatch between the 5 elements of matters and text mining, which is also described above.

3) Unclear claims made by the authors in the Introduction session

There was too much information in the Introduction session of the manuscript and the authors’ arguments were unclear, and the manuscript was structured in a way that was very confusing to the reader. In a normal paper, the Introduction session has three or four paragraphs, and readers do not like an Introduction session with too much information like this. The authors’ manuscripts should make the authors’ arguments in the Introduction session clear.

4) The authors’ claims in the Discussion session were very unclear

The authors described the abstracts of many previous articles in the Discussion session. However, your Discussion session should clearly state what the results mean or what the authors want to argue from the results. The authors should therefore refine and resubmit the Discussion session.

In addition, regardless of the proof of communication in an emergency situation in a nuclear power plant, the last paragraph of the Discussion session contained the description “Possible bias towards the South Korean NPP”. How did this statement relate to proving communication in an emergency situation? This description that confuses the reader is unnecessary.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for sending over the revised paper. This is significantly improved from the previous revision.

Author Response

Your insightful feedback has helped me and my team to improve the paper, thank you for your time and effort.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear authors,

 

Thank you very much for your revised manuscript. I have read your revised manuscript with great interest. My decision at the first review was a rejection. Your revised manuscript is an improvement over the initial manuscript. I sincerely appreciate the authors' cooperation.

However, I believe that the authors' manuscript needs further refinement in wording to reach the level required for publication in this journal. At this time, my response is that the authors' revised manuscript is included in the “Major Revision” category. These reasons are given below.

 

1. The authors should refine the sentences moved from the Introduction session to the Methods session.

Line 97-192, Page 3-4: The authors seem to want to specifically state the introduction of the methodology as “2.1 Related works”, but since the readers would be experts, the authors should omit as much useless information as possible. The authors should present the sentences for the Line 97-192, Page 3-4 section reduced to less than half the current number of lines. The authors described that communication during NPP emergencies was stressful, but readers should not be stressed out to read the authors' published article.

 

2. It is difficult to understand the text of the discussion that the authors added in the revised manuscript.

Line 598-613, Page 18: The author's argument in this part of the manuscript is that, namely, "Extracting papers by PRISMA method with the keywords in Table 1, we found that certain keywords (emergenc*, critical situation, safety, accident, incident, high-risk, stressful, and adverse), thus extracting papers with information useful for NPP emergency communication.". However, on the flip side, if we exclude certain keywords (emergenc*, critical situation, safety, accident, incident, high-risk, stressful, adverse) in Table 1, will only articles of NPP peacetime communication be extracted? Is that right? Arguments of "non-emergency/normal team communication" and other considerations that have nothing to do with the results presented by the authors are very confusing to the reader. I order a major revision of this statement in Line 598-613, Page 18.

 

3 Statements that are not relevant to the results and the authors' claims are not included in the discussion session.

Line 671-706, Page 19-20: Is the description in this discussion an excerpt from the authors' domestic administrative documents? Reference information is not given. Also, if these sentences are excerpts from domestic administrative documents, the authors should present them to the reader in a supplementary file in your manuscript, not in the discussion session. Readers do not like to spend a lot of time reading the authors' articles. The authors should present only the main points to the reader in a smart and polished manner.

 

4. Certain sentences in the Abstract and Conclusion are unclear.

Abstract: Line 25-27, Page 1 and Conclusion: Line 781-782, Page 21: The authors made significant changes to the description of the discussion session in the revised manuscript. Nevertheless, the Abstract and Conclusion included the comment "Our influencing factors extraction method can also be referred to in similar influencing factors studies.”. How was this sentence led from the results and discussion sessions? Since there are significant changes in the Discussion session, the authors should change the description of the Abstract and Conclusion in response to the Results and Discussion.

 

Finally, on behalf of the readers, I was commenting to the authors on some points that are unclear in your revised manuscript. The authors' cover letter seemed to be written in an attempt to persuade me. Normally, the reviewer is merely providing comments to help the reader understand the intent of the authors' article. Therefore, I would like you to try to develop your article so that readers can understand, it rather than trying to persuade some reviewers.

Additionally, authors can replace me with another reviewer. If you are dissatisfied with my comments, please ask the editor to replace me.

Best regards,

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf