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Human Factors in the Nuclear Industry: A Systemic Approach to Safety presents the latest research and studies of human factors in the nuclear industry. It models and highlights scientific and technological foundations before providing practical examples of applications within the nuclear facility of human performance at an individual, group, organization, and system level. Editors Dr. Teperi and Dr. Gotcheva supply concrete models, tools and techniques based on research to provide the reader with knowledge of how to facilitate and support human performance in this dynamic and fast moving safety critical field. Models and case studies are provided to add practical benefits for the reader to apply to their own projects, including user friendly state-of-the-art equipment, fluent work processes for information flow, functional control room resource management, and scope for competence and learning in the work place. This book will benefit nuclear researchers, safety experts, human factors professionals and power plant operators, as well as those with an interest in human factors outside of the nuclear field. Provides a comprehensive framework for human factors, considering not only the individual, but also the team, organizational and industrial levels Presents tried and tested tools and techniques based on research from the nuclear industry Includes models, examples and case studies of user-friendly equipment, fluent work processes and functional control room resource management

For many years, as a direct result of international governmental concern, the nuclear power industry has been at the forefront of industrial safety. This text represents a cross-disciplinary look at the human factors developments in this industry, with wider applications for the entire industrial sector. Technical, psychological and social aspects

There is a growing recognition amongst those involved with the creation and distribution of nuclear power of the value and positive impact of ergonomics, recognition heightened by the realization that safety incidents are rarely the result of purely technical failure. This work provides insights into plant design, performance shaping factors,

The United States (U.S.) nuclear industry, like similar process control industries, has moved toward upgrading its control rooms. The upgraded control rooms typically feature digital control system (DCS) displays embedded in the panels. These displays gather information from the system and represent that information on a single display surface. In this manner, the DCS combines many previously separate analog indicators and controls into a single digital display, whereby the operators can toggle between multiple windows to monitor and control different aspects of the plant. The design of the DCS depends on the function of the system it monitors, but revolves around presenting the information most germane to an operator at any point in time. DCSs require a carefully designed human system interface. This report centers on redesigning existing DCS displays for an example chemical volume control system (CVCS) at a U.S. nuclear power plant. The crucial nature of the CVCS, which controls coolant levels and boration in the primary system, requires a thorough human factors evaluation of its supporting DCS. The initial digital controls being developed for the DCSs tend to directly mimic the former analog controls. There are, however, unique operator interactions with a digital vs. analog interface, and the differences have not always been carefully factored in the translation of an analog interface to a replacement DCS. To ensure safety, efficiency, and usability of the emerging DCSs, a human factors usability evaluation was conducted on a CVCS DCS currently being used and refined at an existing U.S. nuclear power plant. Subject matter experts from process control engineering, software development, and human factors evaluated the DCS displays to document potential usability issues and propose design recommendations. The evaluation yielded 167 potential usability issues with the DCS. These issues should not be considered operator performance problems but rather opportunities identified by experts to improve upon the design of the DCS. A set of nine design recommendations was developed to address these potential issues. The design principles addressed the following areas: (1) color, (2) pop-up window structure, (3) navigation, (4) alarms, (5) process control diagram, (6) gestalt grouping, (7) typography, (8) terminology, and (9) data entry. Visuals illustrating the improved DCS displays accompany the design recommendations. These nine design principles serve as the starting point to a planned general DCS style guide that can be used across the U.S. nuclear industry to aid in the future design of effective DCS interfaces.

Commercial nuclear power plants in the United States (U.S.) have operated reliably and efficiently for decades. With the life extensions of plants now being planned for operation beyond their original operating licenses, there are opportunities to achieve even greater efficiencies, while maintaining high operational reliabilities, with strategic, risk- and economically-informed, upgrades to plant systems and infrastructure. The U.S. Department of Energy's Light Water Reactor Sustainability (LWRS) program supports the commercial nuclear industry's modernization efforts through research and development (R & D) activities across many areas to help establish the technical and economic bases for modernization activities. The Advanced Instrumentation, Information, and Control Systems Technologies pathway is one R & D focus area for the LWRS program, and has researchers at Idaho National Laboratory working with select utility partners to use human factors and instrumentation and controls R & D to help modernize the plant's main control room. However, some in the nuclear industry have not been as enthusiastic about using human factors R & D to inform life extension decision making. Part of the reason for this may stem from uncertainty decision-makers have regarding how human factors fits into the value chain for nuclear power plant control room modernization. This paper reviews past work that has attempted to demonstrate the value of human factors, and then describes the value chain concept, how it applies to control room modernization, and then makes a case for how and why human factors is an essential link in the modernization value chain.

This book addresses human factors research in energy, an emphasis on human factors applications in design, construction, and operation of nuclear, electrical power generation, and oil and gas assets. It discusses advanced strategies in the optimization of human and environmental performance, as well as personal and process safety. The book covers a wealth of topics in design and operation management of both offshore and onshore facilities, including design of control rooms, front-end engineering design (FEED), criticality analysis, offshore transport, human contributions to accidents, cognitive bias in decision making, safety-critical human tasks, and many others. Based on the AHFE 2016 International Conference on Human Factors in Energy, held on July 27-31, 2016, in Walt Disney World®, Florida, USA, the book fills an important gap in the current literature, providing readers with state-of-the-art knowledge in human factors best-practice approaches across different types of industries and energy applications.

Each year billions of dollars are being spent in the area of nuclear power generation to design, construct, manufacture, operate, and maintain various types of systems around the globe. Many times these systems fail due to safety, reliability, human factors, and human error related problems. The main objective of this book is to combine nuclear power plant safety, reliability, human factors, and human error into a single volume for those individuals that work closely during the nuclear power plant design phase, as well as other phases, thus eliminating the need to consult many different and diverse sources in obtaining the desired information.

One of the major issues to emerge from the initial design reviews under the certification process was that detailed human-systems interface (HSI) design information was not available for staff review. To address the lack of design detail issue. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is performing the design certification reviews based on a design process plan which describes the human factors engineering (HFE) program elements that are necessary and sufficient to develop an acceptable detailed design specification. Since the review of a design process is unprecedented in the nuclear industry. The criteria for review are not addressed by current regulations or guidance documents and. therefore, had to be developed. Thus, an HFE Program Review Model was developed. This paper will describe the model's rationale, scope, objectives, development, general characteristics. and application.

This Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) sponsored study has identified human-performance issues in new and advanced nuclear power plants. To identify the issues, current industry developments and trends were evaluated in the areas of reactor technology, instrumentation and control technology, human-system integration technology, and human factors engineering (HFE) methods and tools. The issues were organized into seven high-level HFE topic areas: Role of Personnel and Automation, Staffing and Training, Normal Operations Management, Disturbance and Emergency Management, Maintenance and Change Management, Plant Design and Construction, and HFE Methods and Tools. The issues where then prioritized into four categories using a 'Phenomena Identification and Ranking Table' methodology based on evaluations provided by 14 independent subject matter experts. The subject matter experts were knowledgeable in a variety of disciplines. Vendors, utilities, research organizations and regulators all participated. Twenty issues were categorized into the top priority category. This Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) technical report provides the detailed methodology, issue analysis, and results. A summary of the results of this study can be found in NUREG/CR-6947. The research performed for this project has identified a large number of human-performance issues for new control stations and new nuclear power plant designs. The information gathered in this project can serve as input to the development of a long-term strategy and plan for addressing human performance in these areas through regulatory research. Addressing human-performance issues will provide the technical basis from which regulatory review guidance can be developed to meet these challenges. The availability of this review guidance will help set clear expectations for how the NRC staff will evaluate new designs, reduce regulatory uncertainty, and provide a well-defined path to new nuclear power plant licensing.

Human performance is a key component to the safe operation of nuclear power plants. Further, human performance is quite variable, and while some variability may be random, much of it may be attributed to factors that are difficult to assess. There is a need to identify and assess aspects of human performance that relate to plant safety and to develop measures that can be used to successfully assess human performance for purposes of research that can lead to technical basis for developing human factors review criteria.

Safety, reliability, and productivity in the nuclear industry result from a systematic consideration of human performance. A plant or other facility consists of both the engineered system and the human users of that system. It is therefore crucial that engineering activities consider the humans who will be interacting with those systems. Engineering design, specifically instrumentation and control (I&C) design, can influence human performance by driving how plant personnel carry out work and respond to events within a nuclear power plant. As a result, human-system interfaces (HSIs) for plant operators as well as the maintenance and testing of the I&C system cannot be designed by isolated disciplines. The focus of this publication is to integrate knowledge from the disciplines of human factors engineering (HFE) and I&C to emphasize an interdisciplinary approach for the design of better HSIs and consequently improved human performance in nuclear power plants. This is accomplished by practical explanations of the HFE processes and corresponding outputs that inform the I&C development. More specifically, the publication addresses issues in the design process where collaboration between HFE, I&C and other important disciplines and stakeholders is paramount and identifies key tools and tasks for exchanging inputs and outputs between different design disciplines, particularly I&C and HFE. The practical information provided in this publication is intended to support Member States' capabilities to improve their approach to I&C through the consideration of HFE.

As nuclear power utilities embark on projects to upgrade and modernize power plants, they are likely to discover that traditional engineering methods do not typically make provision for the integration of human considerations. In addition, human factors professionals will find that traditional human performance methods such as function allocation, task analysis, human reliability analysis and human-machine interface design do not scale well to the complexity of a large-scale nuclear power upgrade project. Up-to-date human factors engineering processes, methods, techniques and tools are required to perform these kinds of analyses. This need is recognized widely in industry and an important part of the Department of Energy's Light Water Reactor Sustainability Program deals with identifying potential impacts of emerging technologies on human performance and the technical bases needed to address them. However, so far no formal initiative has been launched to deal with the lack of integrated processes. Although human factors integration frameworks do exist in industries such as aviation or defense, no formal integrated human factors process exists in the nuclear industry. As a first step towards creating such a process, a "unified human factors engineering process" is proposed as a framework within which engineering organizations, human factors practitioners and regulatory bodies can ensure that human factors requirements are embedded in engineering activities throughout the upgrade project life cycle.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) reviews the human factors engineering (HFE) aspects of nuclear plants. NUREG-0800 (Standard Review Plan), Chapter 18, ''Human Factors Engineering, '' is the principal NRC staff guidance document. Two main documents provide the review criteria to support the evaluations. The HFE Program Review Model (NUREG-0711) addresses the design process from planning to verification and validation to design implementation. The Human-System Interface Design Review Guidelines (NUREG-0700) provides the guidelines for the review of the HFE aspects of human-system interface technology, such as alarms, information systems, controls, and control room design. Since these documents were published in 1994 and 1996 respectively, they have been used by NRC staff, contractors, nuclear industry organizations, as well as by numerous organizations outside the nuclear industry. Using feedback from users and NRC research conducted in recent years, both documents have been revised and updated. This was done to ensure that they remain state-of-the-art evaluation tools for changing nuclear industry issues and emerging technologies. This paper describes the methodology used to revise and update the documents and summarizes the changes made to each and their current contents. Index Terms for this report are: Control system human factors, Ergonomics, Human factors, Nuclear power generation safety.

An important consideration in regards to the use of advanced instrumentation in the nuclear industry is the interface between the instrumentation system and the human. A survey, oriented towards identifying the human factors aspects of digital instrumentation, was conducted at a number of United States (US) and Canadian nuclear vendors and utilities. Human factors issues, subsumed under the categories of computer-generated displays, controls, organizational support, training, and related topics were identified. 20 refs., 2 tabs.