Control Room Design Review Research Articles

Control Room Design Review Guidance

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) evaluates the human factors engineering (HFE) of nuclear power plant design and operations to protect public health and safety. The HFE safety reviews encompass both the design process and its products. Detailed guidance for these reviews is provided in two key documents: the HFE Program Review Model (NUREG-0711) and the Human-System Interface Design Review Guidelines (NUREG-0700). The NRC is committed to the periodic update and improvement of the guidance to ensure that they remain state-of-the-art design evaluation tools. In this paper we will describe the guidance development and update methodology and the topics being addressed for both key documents. The guidance update program will improve document usability as well.

Control Room Human Factors Assessment at a Bulgariannuclear Power Plant

This paper presents the results of a preliminary assessment of human factors concerns associated with the six reactor control rooms at the Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant in Bulgaria. This initiative was sponsored by the Committee of Energy, Bulgaria, as part of a multi-faceted project that examined emergency operating procedures, training, and risk-based maintenance practices at Kozloduy. The goal of the study was to determine the overall adequacy of the interfaces, from a human error prevention perspective, between operator and plant processes as found in the control rooms, and if warranted, to develop a program plan for conducting subsequent detailed control room design reviews. The need for this study was stimulated in part by a report prepared by the International Atomic Energy Agency which found that WWER-440 model 230 reactor control rooms were in urgent need of human factors attention. This paper summarizes the findings from the human factors portion of the study, and discusses potential concerns associated with applying U.S. developed human factors engineering criteria to an eastern European nuclear power plant.

Advanced Control Room Design Review Guidelines: Merging Old and New

The nuclear power industry is currently developing operator interface systems based on innovative applications of digital computers. To assure that this advanced technology is incorporated in a way that maximizes the potential safety benefits of the technology and minimizes the potential negative effects on human performance, human factors principles must be considered. NUREG-0700 contains guidelines for the review of operator interfaces. However, in light of the rapid technological advances in digital technology which have taken place in the eleven years since its publication, it is no longer adequate to assess the rapidly changing human-system interfaces. A research program, the purpose of which is to upgrade NUREG-0700, has been initiated. Thus far a set of draft advanced control room design review (ACRDR) guidelines has been complied. Three tasks, which were oriented towards integrating the applicable guidelines in NUREG-0700 into the ACRDR document, are described in the paper.

Control Room Design Review: The Duke Power Experience

The increasing complexity of nuclear power plants, together with the frequency of process functional changes and related regulatory activities, has been met with varying degrees of concern within the utility industry. With a concern for the additional burden placed upon nuclear power plant operators and the need for a good man-machine interface, Duke Power began a human factors review of the control rooms for all Duke nuclear power plants in early 1982. The NRC has now made this type of review mandatory for all nuclear power plants. The Duke Control Room Review focused on three review activities, a human factors survey of the control room, an operating experience review, and a task analysis of required operator actions during emergency conditions. An overview of the methods used in the Duke Control Room Review and a summary of the Review results is presented.

Experience in the Review of Utility Control Room Design Review and Safety Parameter Display System Programs

The NRC staff has reviewed the DCRDR Program Plans for a large fraction of the control rooms in nuclear power plants but has reviewed the Summary Reports of completed reviews for only a few control rooms. We have reviewed the SPDS Safety Analyses and Implementation Plans for about one-third of the SPDSs but have conducted no reviews of completed designs. Our observations, therefore, are based more on utility plans and programs that are in progress than on completed programs.

Assessment Methodology for the Detail Control Room Review

Following the Three Mile Island Unit 2 (TMI-2) incident, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission promulgated requirements for detailed control room design reviews (DCRDR) of all nuclear power plants. As a result, Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) planned a DCRDR for each of its nuclear power plants: Bellefonte, Browns Ferry, Sequoyah, and Watts Bar. A DCRDR seeks to identify and correct sources of manmachine error in nuclear power plant control rooms. There are five phases of a DCRDR: (1) preparation and planning, (2) survey (which includes operational experience review, checklist, and task analysis), (3) assessment, (4) implementation, and (5) reporting. This paper will focus on the assessment phase of TVA's Bellefonte Nuclear Power Plant DCRDR. The paper will first give the methodology and then the results obtained.

The Interpretation of Human Factors Design Criteria for Nuclear Power Plant Control Room Reviews

As a result of the Three Mile Island-Unit 2 (TMI) accident and subsequent investigations, all U.S. nuclear utilities are being required to review the control rooms in their nuclear generating plants for human factors design adequacy. Before TMI, human factors considerations were not an integral part of the design process in the nuclear industry. The utilities were not well equipped to handle the requirement for control room design reviews (CRDR), so, in an attempt to provide useable guidance for CRDR's, the NRC issued several documents that were based on military design standards and commonly-used equipment design guides. A fundamental problem with the guidance issued by the NRC and others is that much of the design guidance is not directly applicable to a review and backfit process such as the CRDR. This paper presents a description of the ongoing process of applying human factors design criteria from the military and aerospace arena to the review and backfit activities in the nuclear utility industry. This process has, and is, taking place in a broad-based utility working group to which the author acts as a consultant. The work includes a large educational segment in which techniques, such as task analysis, are made explicity applicable to the CRDR. So far, this activity has resulted in four guidelines that have been reviewed by the nuclear utilities.

A New Era in Auditable Human Engineered Control System Design???NUREG 0700

NUREG 0700 titled, ''Guidelines for Control Room Design Reviews'', produced by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) as part of the TMI-2 action plan, describes the lessons-learned requirements for a systematic analysis of plant operation as a basis for design of the Operational Man-Machine System (OMMS). The emphasis of this analysis on off-normal operations compared to industry practice is explained and a method for off-normal scenario identification practice is presented. A possible approach for conducting audits of the operating system reflecting the off-normal emphasis is then described.