A Review of Sociotechnical Approaches for Nuclear Power Plant Modernization

Abstract

The nuclear power continues to be a safe, reliable, and carbon-free electricity generating source for the United States (U.S.), though the cost of operating and maintaining the current U.S. nuclear power plant fleet has become uncompetitive with other sources. This gap is attributed to the advent of new digital technologies that other electricity generating industries are currently leveraging to streamline work and greatly reduce operating, maintenance, and support costs. To address the gap, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Light Water Reactor Sustainability (LWRS) Program Plant Modernization Pathway is conducting targeted research and development (R&D) to keep the existing U.S. nuclear power plants economically viable and extend their lifespans by improving their performance through two complementary mission areas:1.Delivering a sustainable business model that enables a cost-competitive U.S. nuclear industry, and2.Developing technology modernization solutions that address aging and obsolescence challenges.Integrated operations for nuclear (ION) is a driving LWRS Program plant modernization research area that focuses on delivering a sustainable business model to provide direction and focus for cross-functional R&D across the LWRS Program that focuses on developing technology modernization solutions. Recent ION research provides a target cost reduction needed in the next 3–5 years for the nuclear industry to remain cost competitive. This research identified major technological advancements (herein referred to as critical work domains) that will significantly reduce cost needed to operate, maintain, and support the existing U.S. nuclear power plant fleet. Some of these key critical work domains include: •Digital instrumentation and control (I&C) and control room modernization•Work/ requirement reduction•Mobile worker technology•Condition-based monitoring•Remote collaboration•Plant automation•Advanced analytics and assuranceThe scope of ION across these critical work domains is to enable transformation of work in a way that improves plant performance and efficiencies through a holistic analysis of the work performed. ION thereby emphasizes the implementation of advanced technologies that eliminate tedious manual tasks, reduce workload, improve team situation awareness, and improve organizational decision-making. To enable the success of ION, this work positions the need to apply a sociotechnical approach that carefully considers the work domain and its constraints to inform the how new technologies can be incorporated to support continued safe and reliable operation of the plant while maximizing the benefits of the new technology. Specifically, this work explores sociotechnical approaches such as cognitive work analysis, co-active design/ interdependency analysis, and systems theoretic process analysis to address the function allocation and data visualization elements of an ION transformation to ensure the economic viability of the existing U.S. nuclear power plant fleet.

Keywords: Sociotechnical Methods, Human Factors Engineering, Nuclear Power Plant Modernization

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1004399