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Going Nuclear: Notes from the officially unofficial book tour
I work in the analytical labs at one of Europe’s oldest and largest nuclear sites: Sellafield, in northwestern England. I spend my days at the fume hood front, pipette in one hand and radiation probe in the other (and dosimeter pinned to my chest, of course). Outside the lab, I have a second job: I moonlight as a writer and public speaker. My new popular science book—Going Nuclear: How the Atom Will Save the World—came out last summer, and it feels like my life has been running at full power ever since.
Hanna Koskinen, Jari Laarni, Marja Liinasuo, Leena Salo
Nuclear Technology | Volume 209 | Number 3 | March 2023 | Pages 332-345
Technical Paper—Human-Machine Interface Technologies | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2022.2087840
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Systems Usability Case (SUC) approach enables a requirement-based human factors (HF) evaluation of complex technical systems that may cover the entire verification and validation process. SUC is based on the Safety Case approach and on the Systems Usability (SU) construct. One of the main aims of establishing a Safety Case is to bring the arguments and evidence for safety to the front in such a way that the reasoning supports the work of a regulator or licensing organization. In the end, the approach enables evaluating the SU of a system and making a reasonable solid argument about the acceptance of the system for use. The question is how the conclusions are reached through a reasoning process in which the arguments are made about the evidence [i.e., identified human engineering discrepancies (HEDs)] to approve or reject the claim concerning the quality of the system. The paper presents an application of SUC to real data from an integrated system validation of the modernized control room (CR) of the Loviisa nuclear power plant. The results of the validation are discussed from the point of view of how the SUC approach enables forming a statement about the acceptance of the CR. Moreover, practical examples are given to demonstrate the identified HF issues and how they were handled in the validation process. The paper provides a general framework for handling of HEDs and for their resolution that can be used in the consolidation of validation test results in a real-world validation project.