Challenges in Risk-informed Safety Management (CHARISMA): EXAM-HRA Project Phase 1: Survey of HRA practices in Nordic and German PRAs

The research activities and findings of the EXAM-HRA project phase 1 are detailed in this special article. EXAM-HRA is a Nordic-German co-operation project for surveying and developing a best practices guideline for performing HRA (human reliability analysis) in Swedish, Finnish and German NPPs (nuclear power plants). Phase 1 work was completed in 1, and included a survey of the current HRA practices and methodologies used in selected Swedish, Finnish and German NPPs. The aim of the research was to develop a method for identifying similar human failure events at the different plants, and subsequently discern the reason for any differences in the analysis. Differences in the HRA analysis mainly come from two sources: differences plant design or operational features, or differences HRA practices used to analyse to human actions. Another objective in this work is to identify good practices in plant operations and HRA analysis. Phase 1 work was done in preparation for Phase 2 starting in early 2011, where the actual guidelines are produced based on the findings of Phase 1. EXAM-HRA is an NPSAG project and VTTs participation in the project was coordinated within the CHARISMA project, which is a part of the SAFIR2010 research program.