TRANSITIONING NUCLEAR POWER PLANT MAIN CONTROL ROOM FROM PAPER BASED PROCEDURES TO COMPUTER BASED PROCEDURES

摘要

The United States (U.S.) has 99 operating Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs). The majority of these weredesigned and commissioned in the 1970s and 1980s. Plants are modernizing their control systems and maincontrol rooms to be able to continue operating past their original 40-year license agreements. U.S. NPPmain control rooms are migrating towards hybrid controls with both digital and analog systems. Digitalupgrades, while costly, provide improved reliability, reduced maintenance cost, and the potential for fewerunplanned outages and fewer human errors. U.S. utilities have been slow to embrace computerizedprocedure system (CBP) research, even though CBPs demonstrate clear operational and human factorsbenefits. Most of the CBP research has been oriented to new reactor designs or full digital control roomsand is not applicable to the piecemeal modernization approach favored by U.S. plants. Research is neededto examine how CBPs impact operations in hybrid control rooms, and how current paper based procedurescan be efficiently migrated to computerized platforms. Work is underway to develop tools and perform theobligatory research needed to design and validate CBPs for modernized U.S. nuclear control rooms.