Abstract
AbstractThe advanced main control room (MCR) in the nuclear power plant widely used digital image displays on video display unit (VDU) as mainly human-computer interface that provides operators highly integrated information to monitor and control system states directly on the screen. Although the illumination level in each workstation and control screen is based on the lighting design guidelines NUREG-0700 of American Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the glare caused by reflected light still exist in the current MCR. The glare 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 purpose of this research is to solve the glare problems by changing lighting environment configuration in nuclear power plant. Firstly, we interviewed the operators in order to understand current screen reflection and glare impact on operators. Then, we conducted an experiment and developed two strategies, 1) attaching capacitive touch screen films to touch screen, and 2) subjects wearing polarized glasses in current nuclear power plant’s lighting configuration environment. The dependent variables in this experiment included efficiency of operating, glare degree, visual fatigue and subjective evaluation. Additionally, we simulated light paths in the current MCR to find out the illumination level and the best lighting configuration based on principles of optics (θi = θr), and then verified the effect by an experiment.The results showed that glare degree, glare area, head shift, operating errors and subjective evaluation were significantly different between the current MCR and the simulated lighting configuration environment in two regions of Wide Display Panel (WDP) and Main Control Console (MCC), and glare degree, glare area, head shift and subjective evaluation were significantly different between the current MCR and the simulated lighting configuration environment in Shift Supervisor Console (SSC) region. Therefore, in order to achieve the safety of operation, the improvements of the nuclear power plant control room lighting configuration environment are proposed from the results of this study.