Finally, it is necessary to design the facilities and equipment at the training centre. The description of the training resources will include buildings, class­rooms, laboratories, simulators, mock-ups and other training delivery set­tings and equipment.

Among the training tools the simulator deserves special attention. According to IAEA (2009b) a key lesson learned regarding commissioning of a nuclear facility is the importance of having a plant-referenced, full — scope control room simulator available well in advance of nuclear facility operation. This simulator not only provides a unique tool for training nuclear facility control room personnel, but also is important for tasks such as normal, abnormal and emergency operating procedure development and validation, development and validation of commissioning tests, validation of digital control systems, and training of other plant personnel.

For many new nuclear facility projects, a full-scope simulator is provided as part of supplying the nuclear facility package. Integrating the simulator development and training schedule with the overall commissioning sched­ule is very important. According to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the simulator should be ready for training three years before the fuel load.

Important considerations regarding simulator information are a simula­tor configuration control process description; a plan for acquiring, validat­ing and using a plant reference simulator (or if a plant reference simulator is not yet available, a description of how and when a part-scope or non­plant-referenced simulator will be used during the training and how and

when that simulator will become plant-reference); a list of unresolved simu­lator deficiencies and recent simulator fidelity data; and simulator perfor­mance indicators or process description.