The Problem
When troubleshooting depends on individual experience and manual setup, consistency and speed suffer.
Workforce Reality
Nuclear plants are managing increasing workforce turnover while relying on a shrinking pool of deeply experienced troubleshooters. New engineers are expected to perform in time-constrained environments with limited institutional memory from which to draw.
Complexity is Rising
Aging equipment, layered modifications, and interconnected systems increase the difficulty of diagnosing failures, particularly under outage or surveillance timelines.
Troubleshooting is the Bottleneck
Troubleshooting requires engineers to manually reconstruct failure logic, build confirm/refute matrices, and format reports — often from scratch. This work is time-intensive, cognitively demanding, and difficult to standardize.
The Cost of Inefficiency
When troubleshooting is slow or inconsistent, plants absorb the cost in extended outages, repeated reviews, and delayed return to service. Over time, this erodes engineering capacity and institutional knowledge even when teams are doing everything "by the book."
The risk is not unsafe operation. The risk is lost time, lost expertise, and avoidable operational drag.