Human Factors in Control Room Modernisation

Abstract

In view of the benefits of human factors engineering for nuclear power plants, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission published a series of Nuclear Regulatory documents to describe the systematic methodologies and processes of human factors engineering on functional requirements analysis and function allocation, task analysis, human–system interface design, training program development, and so forth of the main control room of the nuclear power plant. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the application of human factors engineering to evaluate the usability and safety of the hybrid human–system interfaces developed for the conventional main control room during the process of modernisation. A comprehensive checklist with human factors guidelines was adopted to evaluate the usability of the hybrid human–system interfaces. Expert interview was adopted to collect data on task performance, workload, situation awareness, communication, and coordination based on operators’ experiences. The results provide guidance and a technical basis that should help plant staff with planning changes to the human–system interfaces of main control rooms that address issues that arise during control room modernisation.