Scenario 8: Multi-Unit SMR Monitoring¶
Reactor: Generic SMR, four modules, shared control room. Pattern: Pattern 9 (9 agents). Primary concept: Multi-unit SA scaling.
Description¶
The most agent-dense scenario in the series. Nine agents monitor four reactor modules from a single control room — the configuration anticipated for next-generation SMR plants where one crew oversees multiple units simultaneously.
Agent Architecture¶
- Module monitors (4): One per reactor module, maintaining continuous situation-awareness of its assigned unit
- Cross-unit analyst (1): Watches for correlations and common-cause patterns across modules
- Adversarial agent (1): Different base model, challenges consensus assessments
- Synthesiser (1): Aggregates module monitors into integrated plant-wide picture
- SA Bridge (1): Translates multi-agent output into operator displays adapted to current attention focus
- Coordination monitor (1): Tracks agent health, detects context-divergence, flags stale assessments
Key Design Challenges¶
SA scaling: The operator must maintain awareness across four units. The SA Bridge adaptively surfaces the most safety-relevant information without requiring manual polling.
Cross-unit common-cause detection: The cross-unit analyst correlates patterns invisible to individual module monitors — a feedwater oscillation in Module 2 combined with a similar pattern in Module 4 may indicate a shared support system problem.
Context window arithmetic: With 9 agents generating output, a 128K context window fills rapidly. Strict context discipline is essential.
Adaptive Execution¶
Single-agent mode during normal conditions (one agent per module in Pattern 7 heartbeat mode), escalating to full multi-agent operation when transients are detected. Matches architectural complexity to operational demand.
Demonstrated Principles¶
Tests the limits of multi-agent coordination. Agent count must be matched to operator cognitive capacity — adding agents beyond supervisory capacity produces net negative performance.