Verification of EPRI's nuclear power plant Emergency Operating Procedure Tracking System (EOPTS)

The man-machine interface is an important aspect of nuclear power plant operations. The LWR Owners' Groups developed Emergency Procedure Guidelines (EPGs) to guide individual nuclear power plants in developing plant-specific emergency operating procedures (EOPs). The Emergency Operating Procedure Tracking System (EOPTS) was created to reduce the plant operator load and human errors when using the EOPs. This report describes an effort to verify a BWR version of EOPTS. EOPTS is an on-line real-time expert system that can be used in emergencies at nuclear power plants. Using plant status information, it suggests EOPs that appear appropriate to use and keeps track of the emergency steps that operators actually take. There are 380 on-line input data points that are updated every 8 seconds and 601 rules in the BWR version of the EOPTS rulebase. System verification ensures that the system is working properly. The EOPTS verification framework was established through the document survey in Chapter 2. Chapter 3 discusses how to establish the system verification tools and describes the method for using the testing tools. A detailed verification method is described in Chapter 4. V ampersand V findings in the rulebase and kernel program and their resolutions are discussed in Chapter 5. EOPTS is a useful and helpful training tool. It can help operators to control a nuclear power plant during emergency conditions. It is important that EOPTS be validated and verified over a wide variety of emergency scenarios and operating actions. This document shows utilities how to conduct their own verification efforts when implementing a plant-specific version of EOPTS