A prospective application of ATHEANA for a research reactor PSA

J. BARÓN; J. NÚÑEZ MC LEOD; S. RIVERA

Maastricht, The Netherlands

Congreso; European Safety and Reliability Conference - ESREL 2003; 2003

European Safety and Reliability Association

ABSTRACT: The human errors possible to occur in a research reactor constitute a significant part of the associated risk of such installations. To include the human errors in a PSA for such a facility is a complicated issue, as there are serious limitations. In the present work the ATHEANA (A Technique for Human Error ANAlysis) technique has been adapted and used to understand and quantify typical human errors in the PSA of a research reactor, during its design phase. The adaptations were required to include not only the characteristics of these reactors (that make them quite different from NPPs) but also the fact that the case study was performed on a research reactor during its design phase. For four safety issues, an ATHEANA analysis has been performed, starting from generic procedures, identifying the unsafe actions that can lead to human error events, and establishing the Error Forcing Contexts. The safety issues have been studied and several conclusions drawn, in order to reduce the most significant human error contributors.