Abstract
After the Three-Mile Island (TMI) accident, the nuclear industry began to concern the problem of operator errors. In addition, it was also found that the event-based procedures are not able to handle the complexed parameters and unexpected conditions, thus the symptom-based Emergency Operating Procedures (EOP) are developed for improving the shortage of event-based procedures. However, the symptom-based EOPs still remained the same format, i.e. printed documents and handbooks. In recent years, the modern Man-Machine Interface (MMI) are taking the place of paper-based documents gradually, thus the purpose of this study is to make use of this technique to convert the traditional EOPs documents into a computer program for assisting operators with accident management. Besides, computer-based procedures can also reduce the complexity of EOPs and the burden of operators, and avoid the possibility that operators misjudged under the accident conditions. To test the proposed method, the simulator of Lungmen Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) which is owned by the Taipower Company is used as the research objective. This simulator can operate faster than the normal speed. Moreover, when operators activate or inactivate any components of the simulator, it will give response to the MMI. With this feature, the MMI can help operators with decision-making at any time. In this research, we performed the transient simulation for verifying the proposed method, and supposed all High Pressure Core Flooding (HPCF) and Residual Heat Removal (RHR) pumps were unavailable. In addition, operators also didn’t know which transient occurred in the period of simulation. Since the accident progression developed with operators' actions, we used the dynamic Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) methodology for predicting the possible accident consequences. By analyzing the different accident sequences, operators can be notified of the key systems/functions relating to the core safety shutdown.