Method for Establishing Risk Significance of Procedural Actions for Pre-Initiating Events for Operating Nuclear Power Plants

The technical approach presented establishes a framework intended to provide the necessary elements for a deployable human performance monitoring program that incorporates insights from plant specific probabilistic risk assessments, human reliability analysis, as well as the development of plant specific human failure data. A human performance monitoring program of this structure would be used to provide the ability to perform a risk evaluation or “risk profile” of a procedure (e.g., operations or maintenance) to determine the operational risk significance of procedural performance (i.e., precautions, prerequisites, procedure steps), the likelihood of consequential human error due the performance of the procedure, and the identification of procedure specific barriers to reduce or eliminate consequential human errors. The program would provide the means to assess procedures prior to execution and the means to record and trend human failure events leading to a plant specific human failure database for human activities characterized as pre-initiator. The technical methods and data processing for each of these areas are developed and presented as well as an example application of an operational procedure error leading to a plant level event (i.e., plant trip).