Human reliability assessment and enhancement during outages

Summary form only given. The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) is involved in a program to develop state-of-the-art tools and technology to support outage planning and control and for the assessment and reduction of risk during nuclear power station outages. As part of this program, an effort is underway to reduce human error and its impact during outages. A review of past events shows that more than fifty percent are caused by or involve human-system interaction related deficiencies. Some key factors contributing to the human error during outages include: (1) dynamic changes in plant system configuration; (2) reduced availability of safety systems and instrumentation to plant operators due to maintenance; (3) increased stress due to schedule constraints and large number of human activities to be performed; and (4) lack of technical specifications and procedural guidance. Some major elements of the EPRI human reliability enhancement efforts during outages are reported.<>