A Case Study: HFE Evaluation and Redesign of Small Loop Interface Module in Nuclear Power Plants

摘要

With a growing interest in nuclear energy in China and worldwide, China is on its way to incorporate the third generation nuclear power plant technology, e.g., AP1000 by Westinghouse Electric Company, into the nuclear power unit design. As part of the effort, the methodology and practices of human factors engineering (HFE) have been introduced and applying to the design of nuclear power plants by Chinese design engineers. This case study presents one of the HFE practice applications. The Small Loop Interface Module (SLIM) is a device commonly used to be the interface to control a single modulating control loop in nuclear power plants. According to the customer feedback, the existing design of SLIM was problematic and inconvenient. The case study presents an HFE evaluation of the SLIM, and proposes recommendations to redesign the device interface. A team of instrumentation and control engineers and HFE engineers analyzed the device based on the HFE and human system interface (HSI) design guideline (i.e., NUREG-0700 from the United States [U.S.] regulator) and a more specific design guideline of AP1000 Project. The advantage and disadvantage of the design of the device were itemized and redesign recommendation of the device was proposed based on the evaluation results. Great improvement over the original design of the SLIM has been observed with the interface redesign.