TOWARDS A UNIFIED HFE PROCESS FOR THE NUCLEAR INDUSTRY

摘要

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.