Cognitive-Based Severe Accident Information System Development in a Human Factors Project

The peaceful use of nuclear energy has been attractive around the world due to its advantages of high energy density, reliability and cleanliness. Although nuclear energy has the bright prospect of eventually becoming the vital approach to reduce the global carbon emission, considering its catastrophic damage, study of severe accidents in nuclear power plant is thorny issue. Severe accidents refer to accident conditions that exceed the design basis and cause significant fuel degradation. The tasks in severe accidents have particular characteristics different from other operating conditions, such as high uncertainty of task objects, high cognitive requirements of task responses, and duty conversion in task executions. All of these characteristics interact intimately and bring great challenges to existing HFE analysis and HCI design. This paper analyzes thorough requirements of the severe accident information system from existing human computer interface design and human factors engineering, and develops the computerized severe accident management guidance system and the severe accident specific displays. Together, these elements comprise the cognitive-based severe accident information system. In the severe accident conditions, the severe accident information system will support the MCR and TSC to perform fault diagnosis and accident mitigation operations, which can tremendously alleviate the psychological pressure and workload, increase the accident response efficiency and accuracy, and improve the situation awareness of relevant personnel.