Critique of current human reliability analysis methods

This paper is a critical review of human reliability analysis methods and techniques as applied in current probabilistic safety assessments of nuclear power plants. Practitioners continue to rely on concepts, data and methodologies that have seen relatively little change since the early 1970s, however. The generic human reliability data developed for the seminal 1975 Reactor Safety Study is still being used. Using the review insights, the paper develops recommendations for using plant-specific information from operator training and procedure validation in the human reliability analysis applications.