Skip to content

Scenario 3: Concurrent Alarms During Reactor Transient

Reactor: Generic PWR. Pattern: Pattern 9 (5 agents). Primary concepts: Flooding, delivery-modes, context-divergence.

Description

A reactor transient triggers a cascade of alarms across RCS, pressuriser, steam generators, and containment. Alarm count exceeds operator processing capacity within seconds. Tests whether multi-agent advisory provides net benefit (filtering, prioritising, synthesising) or net harm (adding information flood on top of alarm flood).

Agent Architecture

  • RCS analyst: Monitors temperature, pressure, flow, level
  • Secondary analyst: Monitors steam generators, feedwater, secondary-side conditions
  • Alarm diagnostician: Cross-references active alarms against known patterns in operating experience. Identifies consequential vs symptomatic alarms
  • Procedure navigator: Tracks which EOP path current conditions require, immediate actions, approaching decision points
  • Synthesiser: Integrates outputs into priority-ordered assessment

The Flooding Problem

Without delivery controls, 5 agents respond simultaneously — each producing 200-400 tokens on top of the alarm cascade. Makes the situation worse, not better.

Delivery Mode Solution

Flow-gated delivery: Procedure navigator first (what to do), alarm diagnostician second (what's causing this), synthesiser third (overall picture), specialists on request. Operator controls pacing and can invoke room pause.

Agent-Parallel Execution

Agents run in parallel despite sequential delivery — all begin analysis when transient detected. Total latency ≈ slowest single agent. The synthesiser has all specialist outputs by its delivery turn.

Temporal Coherence

During fast transients, agents starting at different times work with different parameter snapshots. The synthesiser detects and flags temporal skew between assessments.

Demonstrated Principles

Tests whether delivery-modes convert potential information flood into managed stream. Tests alarm-prioritization value. Tests Pattern 9 viability under time pressure.