DEVELOPMENT OF A FLEET-LEVEL HUMAN FACTORS ENGINEERING PROGRAM TO SUPPORT THE DIGITAL MODERNIZATION OF MULTIPLE TURBINE CONTROL SYSTEMS

摘要

A number of years ago, Duke Energy and the United States (U.S.) Department of Energy(DOE) entered into a collaboration to support Duke’s digital upgrade activities for the main controlrooms at three of their commercial nuclear power stations. The collaboration specifically focusedon the human factors engineering (HFE) aspects of Duke’s plans to upgrade the legacy turbinecontrol systems (TCS) at their Brunswick, Robinson, and Harris plants. This TCS upgrade involvedinstalling a common digital control system (DCS), or distributed instrumentation and control (I&C)system platform, which multiple digital plant control systems can be integrated onto as the controlrooms are modernized over time. Given the breadth and depth of the scope of this upgrade, DOEresearchers at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) with expertise in human factors collaborated withDuke throughout the entire HFE life cycle to help ensure the upgrade was performed in a mannerconsistent with regulatory human factors review criteria, such as the U.S. Nuclear RegulatoryCommission’s (NRC) Human Factors Engineering Program Review Model (NUREG 0711, Rev. 3).This paper describes the HFE research performed through the early and middle phases of these TCSupgrades. Specific HFE activities include: 1) the development of a human factors programmanagement plan, 2) performing an operational experience review, 3) developing a framework tohelp map these HFE activities to NUREG-0711 to help understand and catalog the value of differenttypes and phases of human performance data collection, and 4) evaluating the design of the humansystem interface while it was still in the early stages of development. These four HFE activities aredescribed in more detail below.