ISOLDE facility : overview of the current Safety aspects and challenges

by Dr Duc-Duy Phan (CERN)

Friday 25 Jul 2014, 11:30 → 12:30 Europe/Rome

Director meeting room (INFN-LNL)

The On-line Isotope Mass Separator ISOLDE (Isotope Separator On Line Detector) is a facility dedicated to the production of a large variety of radioactive ion beams for many different experiments in the fields of nuclear and atomic physics, solid-state physics, materials science and life sciences. For that purpose an average of 30 targets a year are being produced and then irradiated by a proton beam with an energy of 1.4 GeV and an intensity up to 2 μA. The recent CERN’s long shut-down which started in February 2013 has raised several and various Safety challenges in the ISOLDE target area, especially with the installation of new target handling robots and the upgrade of the existing target storage shelves. In the meanwhile, parallel tasks have been carried out in order to maintain the infrastructures of the target area as well as to repair some critical components of the ISOLDE Front-Ends. In this context risk analyses but also technical and organizational measures have been implemented in order to optimize the personal and collective doses according to the ALARA principle. Along with the on-going work in the target area, ISOLDE has brought a new Safety challenge with the High Intensity and Energy (HIE)-ISOLDE project which consists of a major upgrade of the radioactive ion-beam facility by increasing significantly the energy and intensity of the beam. In order to run the new accelerator, a cryogenic installation will be housed to cool down the cryomodules thus causing the presence of a potential Oxygen Deficiency Hazard (ODH) in the relevant facilities. As a consequence, an ODH analysis has been carried out to determine a hazard acceptability level and therefore take a final decision on the necessity or not to implement additional compensating measures.
The presentation will introduce a few examples of the Safety approach adopted for the ISOLDE facility and finally the conclusions reached following these studies.