A time-reliability correlation for estimating the diagnosis error probability of a nuclear power plant with up-to-date Human–Machine interfaces

Abstract

Despite being developed more than four decades ago based on expert judgment, the THERP time-reliability correlation (TRC) remains widely employed for calculating diagnosis human error probabilities in human reliability analysis for nuclear power plant risk assessment. However, with numerous advancements in nuclear plant equipment and operations, as well as the emergence of plants featuring advanced interfaces, there's a growing need to validate the THERP TRC. The objective of this study is to establish a TRC for the diagnosis human error probability in a modern reference nuclear power plant equipped with up-to-date human–machine interfaces and compare it with the median of the THERP TRC. To achieve this goal, we devised a method to gather event diagnosis times from a simulator and developed procedures to derive diagnosis TRCs using this data. Our findings indicate that while the median of the THERP TRC offers a conservative diagnosis human error probability for up to 25 min, it becomes overly optimistic beyond this threshold.