REVISION OF HUMAN FACTORS ENGINEERING GUIDANCE FOR CONDUCTING SAFETY REVIEWS OF NUCLEAR POWER PLANT CONTROL ROOMS: A STATUS UPDATE APPROACH

摘要

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) reviews the human factors engineering (HFE) programs of applicants for nuclear power plant construction permits, operating licenses, standard design certifications, and combined operating licenses. The purpose of these safety reviews is to help ensure that personnel performance and reliability are appropriately supported. The HFE safety reviews encompass both the design process and its products. Detailed guidance for these reviews is provided in two key documents: the HFE Program Review Model (NUREG-0711) and the Human-System Interface Design Review Guidelines (NUREG-0700). These documents were last updated in 2012 and 2002, respectively. The NRC is committed to the periodic update and improvement of the guidance to ensure that they remain state-of-the-art design evaluation tools. To this end, the NRC is updating its guidance to stay current with recent research on human performance, advances in HFE methods and tools, and new technology being employed in plant and control room design. In 2010 we presented an overview of the HFE guidance update program. In this paper we describe the guidance development methodology, the topics being addressed for both key documents, the current results as well as future plans.