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

Highlights: ► A proactive alarm reduction method improves effectiveness on the alarm reduction. ► The method suppresses alarms based on the ECA rules and facts for the alarm reduction under an alarm flood situation. ► The alarm reduction logics are supplemented to a high hit ratio of the reduction logics during on-line operations. ► The method is validated by human factors validation test based on regulatory requirements. -- Abstract: Conventional alarm systems tend to overwhelm operators during a transient because of a large number of nearly simultaneous annunciator activations with varying degrees of relevance to operator tasks. Thus alarm processing techniques have developed to support operators in coping with the volume of alarms, to identify which alarms are significant, and to reduce the need for operators to infer the plant conditions. This paper proposes a proactive alarm reduction method for SMART (System-integrated Modular Advanced ReacTor) whereby based on the contents of the past operating effects alarm reduction is carried out during the next transient. We designed and implemented the proactive alarm reduction system and constructed the environment for the human factors validation test. Also, eight subjects actually working in a nuclear power plant (NPP) tested the practical effectiveness of the proposed proactive alarm reduction method according to the procedure of human factors validation test under a dynamic simulation of a partial scope for an NPP.