Inter-relationships between performance shaping factors for human reliability analysis of nuclear power plants

Performance shaping factors (PSFs) in a human reliability analysis (HRA) are one that may influence human performance in a task. Most currently applicable HRA methods for nuclear power plants (NPPs) use PSFs to highlight human error contributors and to adjust basic human error probabilities (HEPs) that assume nominal conditions of NPPs. Thus far, the effects of PSFs have been treated independently. However, many studies in the fields of psychology and human factors revealed that there may be relationships between PSFs. Therefore, the inter-relationships between PSFs need to be studied to better reflect their effects on operator errors. This study investigates these inter-relationships using two data sources and also suggests a context-based approach to treat the inter-relationships between PSFs. Correlation and factor analyses are performed to investigate the relationship between PSFs. The data sources are event reports of unexpected reactor trips in Korea and an experiment conducted in a simulator featuring a digital control room. Thereafter, context-based approaches based on the result of factor analysis are suggested and the feasibility of the grouped PSFs being treated as a new factor to estimate HEPs is examined using the experimental data.