D'Agostino, Amy | Engineering Papers

DOE OSTI2017

Workload Response to Soft Controls Presented on Two Interfaces - 382

Most operational Nuclear Power Plants (NPP) in the United States are primarily outfitted with physical (analog) Instruments and Controls (I and C). However, as parts wear out in legacy plants, these I and Cs are being replaced by digital interfaces. Furthermore, new plants are being proposed and built domestically and throughout the world that are composed primarily of soft controls in the main control room. To that end, it is important to understand if and how various types of interfaces affect performance. The present effort sought to compare a desktop and touchscreen interface. The Instantaneous Self-Assessment, the NASA-Task Load Index, and electrocardiography were used to assess workload response while performing three main control room task types on each interface. Results have implications for interface selection and assessment of new NPP main control room designs. (authors)

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

DOE OSTI2012

Human Reliability Considerations for Small Modular Reactors

Small modular reactors (SMRs) are a promising approach to meeting future energy needs. Although the electrical output of an individual SMR is relatively small compared to that of typical commercial nuclear plants, they can be grouped to produce as much energy as a utility demands. Furthermore, SMRs can be used for other purposes, such as producing hydrogen and generating process heat. The design characteristics of many SMRs differ from those of current conventional plants and may require a distinct concept of operations. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) conducted research to examine the human factors engineering and the operational aspects of SMRs. The research identified thirty potential human-performance issues that should be considered in the NRC's reviews of SMR designs and in future research activities. The purpose of this report is to illustrate how the issues can support SMR probabilistic risk analyses and their review by identifying potential human failure events for a subset of the issues. As part of addressing the human contribution to plant risk, human reliability analysis practitioners identify and quantify the human failure events that can negatively impact normal or emergency plant operations. The results illustrated here can be generalized to identify additional human failure events for the issues discussed and can be applied to those issues not discussed in this report.

08 HYDROGEN↗