The importance of simulation facilities for the development of review criteria for advanced human system interfaces

Advanced control room (ACR) concepts are being developed in the commercial nuclear industry as part of future reactor designs. The ACRs will use advanced human-system interface (HSI) technologies that may have significant implications for plant safety in that they will affect the operator`s overall role (function) in the system, the method of information presentation, the ways in which the operator interacts with the system, and the requirements on the operator to understand and supervise an increasingly complex system. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) reviews the HSI aspects of control rooms to ensure that they are designed to good human factors engineering principles and that operator performance and reliability are appropriately supported to protect public health and safety. The NRC is developing guidelines to support their review of these advanced designs. As part of this effort, a methodology for guidance development was established, and topics in need of further research were identified. Simulators of various kinds are likely to play important roles in the development of review guidelines and in the evaluation of ACRs. This paper describes a general approach to review criteria development, and discusses the role of simulators in addressing research needs.