The Human Factors Approaches to Reduce Human Errors in Nuclear Power Plants

Abstract

After the Three Mile Island accident, people have been showing a growing interest in human errors in the nuclear field. Human errors in nuclear power plants have been an important factor in the human factors researches. As a part of human factors practices, nuclear power plants are conducting safety assessments such as Periodic Safety Review (PSR) and Probabilistic Safety Assessment (PSA) in order to reduce any possibility which might cause major accidents or damage. Especially, to reduce the human errors recently not only some efforts to eliminate human related causes have been attempted, but also a means to widely manage the human errors such as Human Factors Management Program (HFMP) has been developed. Therefore, this chapter concerns the properties of complex systems and addresses the various practices of human factors. Traditionally, approaches to reduce human errors were to classify error types and to protect operators from Performance Shaping Factor (PSF). Classification of human errors were conducted in previous studies and applied to find cause factors in various ways. These analyses of human errors were gradually systematized as a safety reporting system. Especially, short-term and long-term countermeasures were attempted to minimize possible human errors in a complex system such as aircraft, nuclear power plant. The purpose of these countermeasures is to reduce human errors and to improve performance of operators and systems at the same time. These countermeasures previously focused on satisfaction assessment of Man-Machine Interface (MMI), but these focused on broad considerations which are operator related such as safety culture, communication, aptitude test, etc. in recent. With regulation, the will of employer and the safety consciousness of operators are necessary to manage them efficiently. This chapter concerns various trials of reducing human errors and discusses requirements to perform an identification of them.