A Level-of-Automation Testbed for Nuclear Power Plants

As advanced reactors near deployment, there is an economically driven need to consider greater levels of automation as part of the concept of operations. Recent efforts to modernize control rooms have shifted from analog to digital concepts of operations, but there is still a need for additional fundamental human factors research to establish optimal levels of automation. This paper presents a novel automation testbed comprised of a simplified reactor simulator (Rancor Microworld Simulator), a computer-based procedure system (Rancor Integrated Procedure System), and a virtual operator framework (Human Unimodel for Nuclear Technology to Enhance Reliability). By systematically varying the activities of the virtual operator acting as the automation system, it is possible to create operating scenarios that fall into distinct levels of automation. Such a testbed is necessary to accelerate the successful deployment of automated concepts of operations for future nuclear power plants.