Theoretical Foundation of Modeling Human-Digital Twin Interactions and Their Impacts on Safety Risk in Nuclear Power Plants

Fargusson, Spencer; Fisher, Riley; Farshadmanesh, Pegah; Bui, Ha; Mohaghegh, Zahra

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/121852 Copy

Description

Title

Theoretical Foundation of Modeling Human-Digital Twin Interactions and Their Impacts on Safety Risk in Nuclear Power Plants

Author(s)

• Fargusson, Spencer
• Fisher, Riley
• Farshadmanesh, Pegah
• Bui, Ha
• Mohaghegh, Zahra

Issue Date

2023

Keyword(s)

• Digital twins
• Human performance
• Nuclear power plants
• Risk-informed regulation

Abstract

With the recent trend in the nuclear power domain of shifting from analog to digital systems, digital twins (DTs) and DT-enabling technologies have received significant attention due to their potential capabilities, such as improving operational efficiency and reliability, enhancing resource allocation, refining maintenance scheduling, and reducing costs of design, construction, operation, maintenance, and decommissioning. Despite the benefits of integrating DT systems into nuclear power plants (NPPs), identification and evaluation of challenges for implementing DT-enabling technologies in current and advanced reactors is a critical research need. One of these challenges is associated with potential human-DT interactions and their impact on plant safety risk. More specifically, human interactions with hardware and software in DTs may differ from those interactions in digital instrumentation and control (DI&C) systems in two important ways. First, the human-DT interactions can involve dynamic feedback processes among states of a physical asset, a DT, and a human through real-time data streams and response to the DT predictions. Second, the human-DT interactions can involve an increase in spatio-temporal dimensionality both in the DT outputs and in human activities associated with DTs. This paper aims to focus on this challenge by investigating the theoretical basis for modeling human-DT interactions, and the impacts of these couplings on plant safety risk. Four key questions that will be addressed in this paper are: (i) What are the potential human-DT interactions when implementing DT technologies at NPPs? (ii) What are the potential undesirable consequences of human-DT interactions on plant safety? (iii) What theories and methodologies exist for evaluating and modeling human interactions with DTs (in both nuclear and non-nuclear domains)? and (iv) What are the challenges and values that each of the existing theories and methodologies could have once they are applied to DTs of NPPs and in Risk-Informed Regulation (RIR)? The outcomes of this research will support the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s RIR for DT applications at existing plants and advanced reactors.

Type of Resource

text

Language

eng

Handle URL

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/121852

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