Ramses: The LHC Radiation Mo Nitoring System for the Environment and Safety (original) (raw)

The LHC Radiation Monitoring System for the Environment and Safety: From Design to Operation

The RAdiation Monitoring System for the Environment and Safety (RAMSES) [1] has been installed and successfully commissioned. The system was originally designed in 2003 for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), it was extended to the CERN Neutrinos to the Gran Sasso (CNGS) experiment in 2005 and it is also planned to extend it further to the rest of the CERN accelerators. This state-of-the-art radiation monitoring and alarm system provides continuously ambient dose equivalent rates and ambient dose equivalent measurements in underground areas as well as on the surface inside and outside the CERN perimeter. It monitors continuously air and water released from the LHC and CNGS installations; it incorporates also conventional environmental measurements such as physicochemical parameters of released water, as well as meteorological parameters. The paper illustrates the experience gained during the various project phases outlining the problems encountered and the solutions implemented. In add...

Radiation monitoring system for the environment and safety project

The project RAMSES (Radiation Monitoring System for the Environment and Safety) will provide LHC with a state of the art radiation monitoring and alarm system. RAMSES will survey the LHC accelerator, the LHC experimental areas and the environment of the LHC. The TIS (Technical Inspection and Safety) division will exploit this system to assess radiation risks and to control the releases of radioactivity. In addition, it will be integrated into the control rooms of the LHC accelerator and the LHC experiments. Obviously, RAMSES will already take into account CERN wide needs to renew the radiation monitoring system around the other CERN facilities. The requirements of the system are derived from CERN's own safety standards (CERN's Radiation Protection Manual, SAPOCO), from those of the CERN's two host states and from European standards. The mandate of the project team covers the system specification, prototyping, tendering, installation and integration of radiation monitors ...

Radiation Monitoring in Mixed Environments at CERN: From the IRRAD6 Facility to the LHC Experiments

IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science, 2000

RadFET and p-i-n diode semiconductor dosimeters from different manufacturers will be used for radiation monitoring at the Experiments of the CERN LHC accelerator. In this work these sensors were exposed over three months in the CERN-IRRAD6 facility that provides mixed high-energy particles at low rates. The aim was to validate the operation of such sensors in a radiation field where the conditions are close to the ones expected inside full working LHC particle detectors. The results of this long-term irradiation campaign are presented, discussed and compared with measurements by other dosimetric means as well as Monte Carlo simulations. Finally, the integration of several dosimetric devices in one sensor carrier is also presented.

CERN Safety Alarm Monitoring Project

The CERN Safety Alarm Monitoring (CSAM) system is the alarm transmission and supervision system for all CERN premises in the LHC era. Its objective is to help safeguard human life, property and the environment. The CSAM system consists of the acquisition, transmission, supervision and management of alarm-related data using state-of-the-art technology. It also includes some automatic safety actions to reduce hazardous events. As this is a large and multidisciplinary project a strategy based on three main issues was defined. First, the safety standards provide us with a technical framework for dealing systematically with safety-related activities in order to minimize system failures, optimize performance and obtain homogeneity with LHC site installations, maintenance and operation. Second, a rapid prototyping methodology leads to the best technical solutions; and, finally, we consider the commercial aspects required for a tendering procedure.

TOWARDS A NOVEL MODULAR ARCHITECTURE FOR CERN RADIATION MONITORING

The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) has the legal obligation to protect the public and the people working on its premises from any unjustified exposure to ionising radiation. In this context, radiation monitoring is one of the main concerns of the Radiation Protection Group. After 30 y of reliable service, the ARea CONtroller (ARCON) system is approaching the end of its lifecycle, which raises the need for new, more efficient radiation monitors with a high level of modularity to ensure better maintainability. Based on these two main principles, new detectors are currently being developed that will be capable of measuring very low dose rates down to 50 nSv h −1 , whilst being able to measure radiation over an extensive range of 8 decades without any auto scaling. To reach these performances, CERN Radiation MOnitoring Electronics (CROME), the new generation of CERN radiation monitors, is based on the versatile architecture that includes new read-out electronics developed by the Instrumentation and Logistics section of the CERN Radiation Protection Group as well as a reconfigurable system on chip capable of performing complex processing calculations. Beside the capabilities of CROME to continuously measure the ambient dose rate, the system generates radiation alarms, provides interlock signals, drives alarm display units through a fieldbus and provides long-term, permanent and reliable data logging. The measurement tests performed during the first phase of the development show very promising results that pave the way to the second phase: the certification.

Cern Safety Alarm Monitoring System

The CERN Safety Alarms Monitoring (CSAM) system is designed to acquire and transmit reliably to the CERN Fire Brigade all alarms generated by a large number of safety alarm equipment distributed around the sites and in the underground tunnels and caverns. The quality and accuracy of the information provided by CSAM is crucial to permit a rapid and efficient intervention by the Fire Brigade. The CSAM project was launched in 1999 to replace the previous alarm system which used obsolete technology and operator devices. The new system is in operation since 2005 and signals from all the alarm equipment on the CERN sites are now handled by the new system. The migration/installation process was terminated in June 2006. This paper presents the system architecture, the deployment process and the lessons learnt implementing an alarm system in an accelerator environment.

The IRRAD Proton Irradiation Facility Control, Data Management and Beam Diagnostic systems: an outlook of the major upgrades beyond the LHC Long Shutdown 2

2019

The IRRAD proton irradiation facility at CERN was built during the Long Shutdown 1 (LS1) to address the irradiation experiment needs of the community working for the High-Luminosity (HL) upgrade of the LHC. The present IRRAD is an upgrade of a historical service at CERN that, since the 90's, exploits the high-intensity 24 GeV/c PS proton beam for radiation-hardness studies of detector, accelerator and semiconductor components and materials. During its first run (2015-2018), IRRAD provided a key service to the CERN community, with more than 2500 samples irradiated. IRRAD is operated via custom-made irradiation systems, beam diagnostics and data management tools. During the Long Shutdown 2 (LS2), IRRAD will undergo several upgrades in order to cope also with new requirements arising for projects beyond the HL-LHC. In this paper, we (1) describe the various hardware and software equipment developed for IRRAD, and (2) present the main challenges encountered during the first years of operation, which have driven most of the improvements planned for LS2 such as applying machine-learning techniques in the processing and real-time analysis of beam profile data. * This work has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement no. 654168 (AIDA-2020).

Radiation Tests on the Complete System of the Instrumentation of the LHC Cryogenics at the CERN Neutrinos to Gran Sasso (CNGS) Test Facility

2010

There are more than 6000 electronic cards for the instrumentation of the LHC cryogenics, housed in crates and distributed around the 27 km tunnel. Cards and crates will be exposed to a complex radiation field during the 10 years of LHC operation. Rad-tol COTS and rad-hard ASIC have been selected and individually qualified during the design phase of the cards. The test setup and the acquired data presented in this paper target the qualitative assessment of the compliance with the LHC radiation environment of an assembled system. It is carried out at the CNGS test facility which provides exposure to LHC-like radiation field.