A proactive alarm reduction method and its human factors validation test of a main control room for SMART

The nuclear regulatory agency of Korea recommended that an alarm system for a main control room (MCR) of SMART (System-integrated Modular Advanced Reactor) should be designed so that inadequate alarms could be eliminated and less important alarms be suppressed so that operators can focus on the important alarms. We proposed a proactive alarm reduction method for SMART (System-integrated Modular Advanced Reactor) based on the contents of the past operating effects during the next time of the alarm reduction. The structure of the proactive alarm processing consists of a database module (alarm reduction rules and reduction data), a primary function (alarm reduction) module and a secondary function (analysis of alarm log) module. The primary and secondary functions are independent. We have designed, implemented the proactive alarm reduction system and constructed the environment for the human factors validation test. Also eight people actually working on an NPP (Nuclear Power Plant) tested the practical effectiveness of the proposed proactive alarm reduction method according to the procedure of human factors validation test under a dynamic simulator of a partial scope for an NPP. It is shown that the proactive alarm reduction method improves the efficiency of alarm reduction. (authors)