Development of a fleet-level human factors engineering program to support the digital modernization of multiple turbine control systems

A number of years ago, Duke Energy and the United States (U.S.) Department of Energy (DOE) entered into a collaboration to support Duke's digital upgrade activities for the main control rooms at three of their commercial nuclear power stations. The collaboration specifically focused on the human factors engineering (HFE) aspects of Duke's plans to upgrade the legacy turbine control systems (TCS) at their Brunswick, Robinson, and Harris plants. This TCS upgrade involved installing a common digital control system (DCS), or distributed instrumentation and control (I&C) system platform, which multiple digital plant control systems can be integrated onto as the control rooms are modernized over time. Given the breadth and depth of the scope of this upgrade, DOE researchers at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) with expertise in human factors collaborated with Duke throughout the entire HFE life cycle to help ensure the upgrade was performed in a manner consistent with regulatory human factors review criteria, such as the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC) Human Factors Engineering Program Review Model (NUREG 0711, Rev. 3). This paper describes the HFE research performed through the early and middle phases of these TCS upgrades. Specific HFE activities include: 1) the development of a human factors program management plan, 2) performing an operational experience review, 3) developing a framework to help map these HFE activities to NUREG-0711 to help understand and catalog the value of different types and phases of human performance data collection, and 4) evaluating the design of the human system interface while it was still in the early stages of development. These four HFE activities are described in more detail below.