This book statistically confirms that complexity and changing technologies that affect the way operators interact within the systems of the nuclear facili-ties exacerbate the severity of incidents caused by human error and details the application of the systems engineering process to reduce human error given industries’ rapidly advancing technology. Technology, Human Performance, and Nuclear Facilities: A Systems Engineering Approach to Reduce Human Error provides a basic understand-ing of Human Error/ P erformance and its relation to industrial operations and advancing technologies incorporated into facilities. The book discusses the context surrounding the complexity of changing technologies at nuclear facili-ties and the potential worsening of problems caused by human error when technology advancements concerning operator interaction with control sys-tems are implemented. It presents how to reduce human error propensity given the incorporation of advanced technology and covers ways to reduce human error using the systems engineering process. Also offered are several concepts related to the operator’s involvement in the systems engineering process and the human performance integration with system operational requirements and system testing, evaluation, and validation, and the procedures and training development in the systems engineering process. This book presents empirical evidence for the importance of human performance management in the con-text of nuclear facilities and offers practical recommendations for the improve-ment of this function. Systems engineers, plant/ design engineers, the nuclear industry, plant operations management, and those involved in industrial and nuclear safety will find something of interest in this book.

The contribution of human performance to the occurrence of significant events and consequently to overall performance improvement in the nuclear field has been well documented. Nuclear industry experience shows that within nuclear power plants, 80% of significant events can be attributed to human error. Monitoring and continually improving human performance has now become one of the key challenges in the management of human resources for a nuclear facility. This publication provides practical guidance in this area and will assist Member States to review and improve the systems and process for improving human performance as a major contribution to sustaining and improving the performance of nuclear facilities.

Training is an important tool to achieve and maintain the required competence of personnel working in nuclear facilities. Effective training and qualification of personnel are necessary for the achievement of high safety and efficiency standards in nuclear facility performance. Training and qualification combined is a key feature of the integrated management systems of nuclear facilities. It is these considerations that led to this publication which consolidates the experience gained worldwide using the systematic approach to training (SAT) for nuclear facility personnel. It provides a basis for establishing and sustaining the quality and reliability of training and qualification for all main categories of nuclear facility personnel. SAT has proved its effectiveness in nuclear and other safety critical industries over decades and is recognized as the best international practice in nuclear training. The publication details the processes and methodology, presents good practices and offers recommendations from the experts in the field on the entire set of activities within the SAT–based training methodology and provides examples of SAT application. It builds on, and supersedes, guidance provided in an earlier IAEA publication (Technical Report Series 380, Nuclear Power Plant Personnel Training and its Evaluation: A Guidebook). A key feature of this publication is demonstrating how SAT–based training serves as one of the important processes in a nuclear facility management system and how it integrates with other processes.

The book has been developed in conjunction with NERS 462, a course offered every year to seniors and graduate students in the University of Michigan NERS program. The first half of the book covers the principles of risk analysis, the techniques used to develop and update a reliability data base, the reliability of multi-component systems, Markov methods used to analyze the unavailability of systems with repairs, fault trees and event trees used in probabilistic risk assessments (PRAs), and failure modes of systems. All of this material is general enough that it could be used in non-nuclear applications, although there is an emphasis placed on the analysis of nuclear systems. The second half of the book covers the safety analysis of nuclear energy systems, an analysis of major accidents and incidents that occurred in commercial nuclear plants, applications of PRA techniques to the safety analysis of nuclear power plants (focusing on a major PRA study for five nuclear power plants), practical PRA examples, and emerging techniques in the structure of dynamic event trees and fault trees that can provide a more realistic representation of complex sequences of events. The book concludes with a discussion on passive safety features of advanced nuclear energy systems under development and approaches taken for risk-informed regulations for nuclear plants.

Human error is a significant factor in the cause and/or complication of events that occur in the commercial nuclear industry. In recent years, great gains have been made using Human Performance (HU) tools focused on targeting individual behaviors. However, the cost of improving HU is growing and resistance to add yet another HU tool certainly exists, particularly for those tools that increase the paperwork for operations. Improvements in HU that are the result of leveraging existing technology, such as hand-held mobile technologies, have the potential to reduce human error in controlling system configurations, safety tag-outs, and other verifications. Operator rounds, valve line-up verifications, containment closure verifications, safety & equipment protection, and system tagging can be supported by field-deployable wireless technologies. These devices can also support the availability of critical component data in the main control room and other locations. This research pilot project reviewing wireless hand-held technology is part of the Light Water Reactor Sustainability Program (LWRSP), a research and development (R & D) program sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The project is being performed in close collaboration with industry R & D programs to provide the technical foundations for licensing, and managing the long-term, safe, and economical operation of current nuclear power plants. The LWRSP vision is to develop technologies and other solutions that can improve the reliability, sustain the safety, and extend the life of the current nuclear reactor fleet.

The nuclear industry and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (USNRC) have been working for several years on the development of an adequate process to guide the replacement of aging analog monitoring and control instrumentation in nuclear power plants with modern digital instrumentation without introducing off-setting safety problems. This book identifies criteria for the USNRC's review and acceptance of digital applications in nuclear power plants. It focuses on eight areas: software quality assurance, common-mode software failure potential, systems aspects of digital instrumentation and control technology, human factors and human-machine interfaces, safety and reliability assessment methods, dedication of commercial off-the-shelf hardware and software, the case-by-case licensing process, and the adequacy of technical infrastructure.