Human Reliability Analysis — HUNTER
Goal
To develop a human-reliability assessment (HRA) application, called the Human Unimodel for Nuclear Technology to Enhance Reliability (HUNTER).
HUNTER functions as a framework for dynamic HRA modeling — including a simplified model of human cognition and a virtual operator — that produces relevant outputs, such as human-error probability, time spent on task, or task decisions based on plant evolutions.
Outcome
Researchers will develop a framework that formalizes the HRA method as software code that could be applied to industry risk analysis. The initial demonstration centers on a steam-generator tube-rupture scenario, using complexity as the first virtual operator performance-shaping factor. The implementation of HUNTER can be readily scaled to other nuclear power plant scenarios of interest and will include additional performance-shaping factors in the future.
Planned major accomplishments
- Finalize a quality-assured code for industry use; facilitate a HUNTER user group with industry engagement.
- Use HUNTER to model safety margins and staffing efficiency through planned control-room upgrade scenarios related to digital instrumentation and control; develop an approach for the use of artificial-intelligence and machine-learning technologies for simplifying HUNTER analyses; develop and demonstrate interfaces between HUNTER and other simulator tools (e.g., full-scope and microworld simulators).
