ABSTRACT
With the rapid progress of science and technology, fully automatic operational systems are being introduced into automobile assembly factories, hydroelectric power plants, thermoelectric power plants, and other major industrial facilities. Some areas of the industrial sector, however, have not begun to use fully automatic systems. One example is nuclear power plants. Ever since Japan’s first nuclear power plant began commercial operation some 30 years ago, this industry has relied on teams of operators. Every year the utilities in Japan employ young people and train them to be dependable operators through a series of reiterative theoretical and practical training measures (JAIF, 1995). Some of these people are university graduates, but most are high-school graduates. Although the ratio of nuclear power plant operators who have graduated from universities is said to be lower in Japan than in western countries, the operational record of nuclear power plants in Japan is excellent (Mishiro, 1995). This fact suggests that the repeated theoretical and practical training measures that Japanese operators undergo compensate for the initial
differences in their educational backgrounds. But what are the initial effects of the differences in these educational backgrounds, and how effectively does this repeated theoretical and practical training close the gap? To find out, we conducted the two experiments described and discussed below.
