A Study on the Difference of Response Characteristics according to Description and Expression Method of Procedures

Abstract : Emergency operating procedures(EOPs) of nuclear power plants should be described considering the cognitive capability and limitation of operators and provide appropriate information in the aspect of human factors. Procedures which doesn't consider cognitive characteristics of operators can become causes of human errors. In previous researches, in order to reduce these problems related to the description of EOP, an improvement suggestion for EOP writer's guide has been proposed, which is reflected human factors aspects that should be considered when describing EOPs. The proposed items, however, have a necessity to be validated because it was listed from var-ious documents such as standards and guidelines without any special validation process. For that reason, in this study, a validation process were performed to show that procedures, which are described in compliance with the requirement items proposed in the improved EOP writer's guide, have positive effects in the aspects of human errors and performance comparing with previous procedures. Experiments were perfor-med to compare the performances of two tasks which are described in compliance with each writer's guide of before and after the impro-vement During each task was performed in experiments, changes of physiological responses such as EEG and ECG were measured to evaluate the cognitive workload and the stress of operators in each task. And also, as the performance, frequencies of errors and cognition speeds of each task were evaluated. In the results of the experiment, the portions of the β wave decreased in the tasks overall after the imp-rovement. In the case of ECG, change rates of the mean of R-R interval were decreased in the tasks after improvement. In the results of the performance, the cognition and the response time of the tasks after the improvement were predominant with statistical significancies. Error times in the tasks after improvement were decreased or same to the tasks before improvement. Conclusively, it was validated that the procedures were described in compliance with the improved EOP writer's guide had effects on the reduction of human errors and improvement of performance.