Comparative Evaluation of Three Cognitive Error Analysis Methods Through an Application to Accident Management Tasks in NPPs

This study was performed to comparatively evaluate selected Human Reliability Analysis (HRA) methods which mainly focus on cognitive error analysis, and to derive the requirement of a new human error analysis (HEA) framework for Accident Management (AM) in Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs). In order to achieve this goal, we carried out a case study of human error analysis on an AM task in NPPs. In the study we evaluated three cognitive HEA methods, HRMS, CREAM and PHECA, which were selected through the review of the currently available seven cognitive HEA methods. The task of reactor cavity flooding was chosen for the application study as one of typical tasks of AM in NPPs. From the study, we derived seven requirement items for a new HEA method of AM in NPPs. We could also evaluate the applicability of three cognitive HEA methods to AM tasks. CREAM is considered to be more appropriate than others for the analysis of AM tasks, HRMS is also applicable to the error analysis of AM tasks. But, PHECA is regarded less appropriate for the predictive HEA technique as well as for the analysis of AM tasks. In addition to these, the advantages and disadvantagesofeachmethodaredescribed.