Early-Stage Design and Evaluation for Nuclear Power Plant Control Room Upgrades

Abstract

As control rooms are modernized with new digital systems at nuclear power plants, it is necessary to evaluate operator performance with these systems as part of a verification and validation process. While there is regulatory and industry guidance for some modernization activities, there are no well defined standard processes or predefined metrics available for assessing what is satisfactory operator interaction with new systems, especially during the early design stages. This paper proposes a framework defining the design process and metrics for evaluating human system interfaces as part of control room modernization. The process and metrics are generalizable to other applications and serve as a guiding template for utilities undertaking their own control room modernization activities.