Dynamic Behavior of NPP Operating Crew: an Object-Based Modeling Approach to Simulation

摘要

In a complex environment such as a nuclear power plant (NPP) control room (CR), typical operations involve significant human/human interactions among the operating crew. Under high-workload situations the reliability of such interactions becomes extremely important. Incomplete information, little time, stressful conditions and lack of mutual awareness usually lead to critical human errors. The aggregate impact of multiple human errors inside communication loops can result in complex failure modes to arise. This research investigates the dynamic team behavior under such situations through the application of simulation methods. Due to limited scope of existing modeling techniques, this research proposes an object-based modeling methodology to represent different roles and behaviors within the system. Individual human elements, structure of groups, behavior inside a group and rules of interaction in the context of a dynamic system are being studied and the approach is applied to a real-time control and monitoring unit of a four-steam generator feed-water system. The ultimate goal of the research is to incorporate the contributions of human/human and human/system interactions on system risk into Dynamic Probabilistic Risk Assessment (DPRA) approaches in order to develop a more realistic risk profile for complex systems.