Abstract
The advanced main control room (MCR) in the nuclear power plant widely used touch function (panel) on visual display unit (VDUs) as mainly human-computer interface that provides operators highly integrated information to monitor and control system states directly on the screen. Because system complexity and potential error factor may affect the speed and accuracy of operators to read the important information on the screen, and that probably causes error, and may lead to a severe accident in the nuclear power plant. The research aimed to investigate the latent errors for improving operation performance by changing the configuration of information display format in the advanced MCR. A questionnaire had been designed for important latent errors by preliminary assessment of MCR error factors and depth interviews with the operators in Lungmen nuclear power plant (NPP). The survey results showed that the intensive information display that was hard to read the text on the screen was the most important factor. Thus, we developed two strategies, 1) moving areas character to first character location, and 2) different color contrast of background areas in current interfaces, and conducted experiment based on depth interview, procedures studies, observations, and survey. And the hypothesis in this study was that the different interfaces significantly affect operation performance. In each level, participants had to follow the “control rod withdrawal criticality” procedures and deal with the events. Then, the optimal interface was suggested after analyzing operator`s performance and subjective evaluation. The result of this study indicated that the poor design was the most important latent error in MCR. And the experiment result showed that the condition of modified background color with different color contrast in operation procedures was found the most effective and significant in shortening the component searching time. Moreover, this improved interface was necessary to simplify the intensive information and worth to be refereed for the future interface designers of related works.