Radiation Protection Aspects of the Design of the MEDICIS facility at ISOLDE

by Dr Joachim VOLLAIRE (CERN)

Thursday 26 Jun 2014, 10:30 → 11:00 Europe/Rome

Director meeting room (INFN-LNL)

The MEDICIS facility, which will start operating in 2015 at CERN, is a research facility that will make radioisotopes for medical applications. The radioisotopes will be produced in a target which will be placed between the ISOLDE target, which only intercepts a small fraction of the proton beam, and the beam dump. The irradiated target will be retrieved outside of the ISOLDE target area using a remote handling system before being placed on an offline separator for the extraction of the isotopes of interest. The integration of those new processes in the existing ISOLDE facility have required several studies to ensure the safe operation of the facility and limit the radiological impact of the facility on personnel and the environment. The Monte-Carlo code FLUKA has been used to assess the different shielding configurations required for the project considering the possibility of future upgrade of the ISOLDE facility. In addition to the bulk shielding requirements to attenuate stray radiations from the proton beam interactions, the necessary shielding for the hot -cell and for the bunker shielded hosting the offline separator were evaluated using the “two-steps” capabilities implemented in FLUKA. The impact of the MEDICIS target on the air activation and the associated released of short-lived radionuclides produced in air into the environment were also calculated with FLUKA and used as an input for the upgrade of the nuclear ventilation of the target area.