Virtual simulation of a nuclear power plant's control room as a tool for ergonomic evaluation

This research deals with the virtual modeling and ergonomic evaluation of a PWR NPP control room, aiming specially with the assessing of the elapsed times spent by operators to control such safe-critical system. Secure Nuclear power plant (NPP) operation involves using guidelines that specify procedures to be followed by personnel. Control rooms' environments, though, present complex features and a series of mechanisms unpredicted by the guidelines, which must be faced accordingly. All these must be considered in ergonomics evaluations of NPP control rooms. This work proposes the use of virtual simulation through reusing a game engine platform, in which the real environment may be virtually modeled and people are able to virtually navigate and interact among themselves, to support ergonomics evaluation in adequating control rooms for licensing of NPPs. Virtual experiments results were very similar to previous ones collected in the real control NPP room, indicating that the former may be executed before the later as a means of prototyping design and evaluation, before executing any real intervention. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.