As the brain of Nuclear Power Plant (NPP), Main Control Room (MCR) is an integrated system which comprises varieties of Human System Interfaces (HSIs), procedures, operators and environment. HSI is the medium that the operators monitor and control the Nuclear Power Plant. To improve the operating performance and avoid human errors, Human Factor Engineering (HFE) is required to be implemented in the new plant HSI design for plant safety.
HPR1000 has followed the NUREG-0711 as the guidelines of HFE program, in which 12 elements are included. Task Analysis (TA) and Human Factor Verification & Validation (HF V&V) are two important elements for the HSI design. For task analysis, the design engineers could analyze the human actions (HAs) to identify the tasks that the operators must perform to accomplish the plant functions. Task analysis identifies not only the specific tasks needed to accomplish HAs but also the information, and controls required to complete those tasks which are considered as important input for the MCR HSI design.
HF V&V is one of the final stages of the Human Factors Services as included in NUREG-0711. The HF V&V objective is to evaluate that the HSI design conforms to HFE design principles and that the adequacy of the interfaces enable plant personnel to successfully perform their tasks and other operational goals, assuring plant safety. The V&V element consists of four major activities: Sampling of Operational Conditions, Design Verification, Integrated System Validation, and HED Resolution. For different targets, Design Verification could be separated into two kinds of activities: HSI Task Support Verification (TSV) and HFE Design Verification (DV). TSV is an evaluation to verify that the HSI supports the requirements of personnel tasks, as defined by task analyses. The HAs, controls and information identified in task analysis could be used as the basic input for HSI TSV.
To provide adequate input for the HSI design and TSV, the operational conditions of task analysis should be sampled as many as possible to cover all the typical conditions, which include normal conditions, transients, Design Based Accidents (DBA), Beyond Design Based accidents (BDBA), even severe accidents. The sampled conditions for task analysis would be available for the task support verification of the related HSIs.
In conclusion, the task analysis could be used as the design input for HSI, while the task support verification could review the designed HSI with the output information from TA. This paper addresses the research and engineering implementation methodologies for task analysis and HSI task support verification. As the first reactor of HPR1000, HFE program have been carried out in Fuqing 5&6 MCR from preliminary design to final test. The Fuqing 5&6 TA and TSV achievements for MCR HSIs design are summarized in the paper.
