Verification and validation (V&V) as applied in the nuclear power community has tended to involve efforts such as integrated system validation, which comes at the tail end of the design stage. In this opinion paper, I suggest the value of early-stage V&V and highlight how this early-stage V&V can help improve the design process for control room modernization. I argue that there is a need to overcome two shortcomings of V&V in current practice—the propensity for late-stage V&V and the use of increasingly complex psychological assessment measures for V&V.
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