Transitioning Nuclear Power Plant Main Control Room From Paper Based Procedures to Computer Based Procedures

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

• Publication year

  2018

• Venue

  Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting

• Publication date

  2018-09-01

• Fields of study

  Computer Science, Engineering, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1177/1541931218621363
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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