CHAPTER 5: Organisational aspects of SAMG, tasks of the Technical Support Centre
Organisational aspects of SAMG, tasks of the Technical Support Centre 
Three specific functions defined during the execution of SAMG are:
  - Evaluators: persons who assess the plant condition and formulate recommendations.
  - Decision maker(s): one or more persons who approve or modify the recommendations by the evaluators.
  - Implementers: people who carry out the actions decided upon.
The evaluators are often plant staff with expert knowledge of the evolution of severe accidents. The decision maker is a person with a wider perspective of the plant condition, offsite effects and the support required to implement recommended actions. He/she can be the Emergency Director or a person with similar authority. For purely plant operational matters the Operations Manager may be the decision maker - This may even be the preferred situation, as the Emergency Director may be overloaded with organisational and logistics matters during the execution of the plant Emergency Plan. The implementers are usually the control room staff and field operators (for local manual actions).
The evaluators are sometimes referred to separately as the Accident Assessment Team.
It is important to separate the functions of evaluators and decision maker(s). The evaluators assess the plant conditions on the basis of observed plant parameters and their interpretation. They periodically consult the logic diagrams from which SAMG actions should be identified.
The decision maker has a wider perspective. He/she knows what tools are available to repair failed systems, knows what staffing is required and the staff that are available, knows the extent of the site damage (in an external event) and remains in contact with offsite organisations both for offsite plant support and ongoing actions to protect the public. For example, a recommendation to vent the containment will have impact on offsite actions and, hence, must be coordinated with the responsible offsite organisations.
As indicated earlier, the Technical Support Centre (TSC) which is situated in a separate and dedicated location is in charge of the evaluation and communicating their recommendations to the decision maker for the control room to implement. It is beneficial if the TSC staff includes a senior reactor operator for optimal communication with the control room staff. The main task of the TSC is to follow the SAMG and recommend the needed actions, along the way as documented in the Technical Support Guidelines (or similar equivalent document), as described in Module 3, Sec. 8.
Further description of roles may be found in SSG-54, paragraphs 4.1 to 4.11 .
The SAMG evaluation, decision making and implementation functions should be well integrated within the plant Emergency Plan.
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