GUIDANCE FOR NUCLEAR POWER PLANT CONTROL ROOM AND HUMAN-SYSTEM INTERFACE MODERNIZATION

Several nuclear power plants in the United States are starting instrumentation and control (I&C) modernization programs using digital equipment to address obsolescence issues and the need to improve plant performance while maintaining high levels of safety. As an integral part of the I&C modernization program at a nuclear power plant, the control room and other human-system interfaces (HSIs) are also being modernized. To support safe and effective operation, it is critical to plan, design, implement, train for, operate, and maintain the control room and HSI changes to take advantage of human cognitive processing abilities. A project, jointly funded by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and the United States Department of Energy (DOE) under the Nuclear Energy Plant Optimization (NEPO) Program, is developing guidance for specifying and designing control rooms, remote shut-down panels, HSIs etc. The guidance is intended for application by utilities and suppliers of control room and HSI modernization. The guidance will facilitate specification, design, implementation, operations, maintenance, training, and licensing activities. This guidance will be used to reduce the likelihood of human errors and licensing risk, to gain maximum benefit of implemented technology, and to increase performance. The guidance is of five types. The first is planning guidance to help a utility develop its plant-specific control room operating concepts, its plant-specific endpoint vision for the control room, its migration path to achieve that endpoint vision, and its regulatory, licensing, and human factors program plans. The second is process guidance for general HSI design and integration, human factors engineering analyses, verification and validation, in-service monitoring processes, etc. The third is detailed human factors engineering guidance for control room and HSI technical areas. The fourth is guidance for licensing. The fifth is guidance for special topics related to operations and maintenance including training and simulation and safety monitoring and control guidance. Currently, the plan is that the overall guidelines will be made up of 34 guidelines on different topics of which 31 are completed. This may increase based on input from the project working group which includes 21 utilities as well as nuclear utility industry participants