INTERNATIONAL ACCELERATOR RADIOLOGICAL PROTECTION E-MAIL (IARPE) NEWSLETTER "The Official Publication of the Accelerator Section of the Health Physics Society" (with Contributions from International Correspondents) ====================================================================== March/April 1996 Circulation: 210 Vol. 5, #2 ====================================================================== OFFICERS ====================================================================== President: Bob May, CEBAF President-Elect: Lutz Moritz, TRIUMF Past President: Nisy Ipe, SLAC Secretary: Steve Musolino, BNL Treasurer: Carter Ficklen, CEBAF Newsletter Editor: Vashek Vylet, SLAC Directors: Jeff Leavey (1998) Tracy Tipping (1998) Lorraine Day (1997) Don Cossairt (1997),FNAL De Vaughn Nelson (1996) Paula Trinoskey (1996),LLNL ====================================================================== CONTENTS From the Editor From the President Feature article: Shielding - from Sliderules to Virtual Reality ANSI Committee Update Section News News from correspondents: CEBAF, LANL, SLAC, FERMILAB, CERN Job Advertisement How to subscribe or update subscription Closing thoughts >From the Editor Vashek Vylet ====================================================================== You might have heard some promisses concerning an imminent birth of a web version of IARPE. Information from reliable sources now indicates that the pregnancy has been extended till the end of June, due to other more pressing issues (usually called work). Speaking of birth, every IARPE issue seems to go through an equally glorious but painful process: shortly after the deadline for contributions, the editor sweats because only two or three articles came in. Follows a burst of frantic e-mail activities, begging and arm twisting. We could try something new next time - I will send a request for contributions to all IARPE readers, in addition to regular correspondents. Perhaps this will bring in more contributions, while relieving the pressure on regular correspondents. Nestor of radiation physics at SLAC, Ted Jenkins, wrote the feature article for this issue. Ted's historical perspective on shielding is thought provoking, as he extrapolates from the humble beginnings in the recent past to a science fiction scenario in the future. Mea culpa - the volume and number of the last IARPE issue was wrong - it should have read vol 5. #1. Thanks to Ted DeCastro, IARPE archivist, to point this out. The archived issue (accessible through the web as ftp://ehssun1.lbl.gov/IARPE/hpnlet01.96) has been corrected. Please note a slight change in "How to subscribe to IARPE" column below. Any future requests should be sent to listserv@mailbox.slac.stanford.edu The "mailbox" element is new, due to the fact that this list was migrated from VM to Unix. If you have lately updated your address or subscribed using listserv@slac.stanford.edu your update might not work - but you would of course notice that. >From the President Bob May ====================================================================== I'm providing a copy of second draft minutes the IPRA 9 meeting for information. I thought it better to keep the IARPENL readers aware of Section goings-on rather than provide a flawless set of minutes. The final minutes will be published after review of this draft by the participants. I want to thank those in attendance, particularly individuals whose membership stems from their IRPA affiliation. It was a rare opportunity to meet and talk with international colleagues. Thanks go to Lorraine Day for the excellent job of recording the meeting and for providing the first draft. My apologies for any inaccuracies found in the second draft. Please send any corrections directly to me. Draft Minutes of the Accelerator Section meeting at IRPA 9 Time: 1315 hours Date: April 18, 1996 Those in attendance: Robert May (CEBAF) presiding, Ken Kase (SLAC), Roger Kloepping (LBL), Graham Stevenson (CERN), Steve Mussolino (BNL), Joseph McDonald (PNL), L. Scott Walker (LAMPF), Roy Ryder (Daresbury), Thomas Johnson ( Univ. Texas, Houston), Lorraine Day (CAMD), Robert Macek (LANL) , Robert Devine (Los Alamos), Peitir Louwrier (NIKHEFR), Robert Loesch (DOE), and Vladimir Pradopov. Bob May provided everyone with an agenda. The first order of business was a request for a volunteer to help James Liu (SLAC) with the section nominating committee. Bob then informed us that two section members had been appointed to co-chair ANSI 43.4. These are Scott Walker and James Liu. However, since the ANSI standard focussed on industrial settings, they were still in need of representation from industry. The latest accelerator newsletter updates the scope of what should be encompassed by this standard. L. Scott Walker further recommended that an individual on the committee should participate on the ICRP accelerator standard committee. They were currently discussing a basic standard writing style and expressing concern that most of the industry-related former members had dropped off the committee. The meeting then moved on to consider the update of CASOG "Control of prompt radiation hazards at accelerator facilities". The report provides a risk-based approach to safety standards for design and instrumentation. Steve Musolino approached Bob Youngblood (BNL) as an external reviewer and asked him to review the document from Nuclear Public Safety point of view. Steve Musolino, a member of CASOG, suggested sending a letter to ICRP detailing the major points of the committee findings. Bob May reported that he hopes a draft manuscript would be ready in 6 to 8 weeks for distribution. It was again re-affirmed that the committee findings should be published in HP Journal, subsequent to the normal process of peer-review. Finally, Bob May brought up the matter of IRPA delegate selection process within the Health Physics Society and his letter to Bill Mills. Bill Mills indicated he would formally address it at the May HPS Board meeting and that is is on the agenda for that meeting. Comments were made suggesting that the HPS bylaws may have to be amended since they were en-acted prior to the development of sections. Part of the proposal from the Accelerator Section to Bill was that each section be assigned one delegate slot. Bob May made us aware that CEBAF pursuing the amendment of surface contamination limits for photon-only emitting radionuclides. Under new business, Joe McDonald reminded us of the mid-year meeting and that abstracts are due in June, while Graham Stevenson requested that we all make an effort to publish accelerator - related health physics in the Health Physics Journal. He stated that as a whole, we produce very few critically reviewed papers, and stressed the importance of peer-reviewed publications. The meeting was adjourned at 1400 hours. FEATURE ARTICLE T. M. Jenkins ====================================================================== SHIELDING - FROM SLIDERULES TO VIRTUAL REALITY To put things in a biblical context: in the beginning there was physics and it was unknown, or at least a lot of it was, especially the physics that was involved in the shielding of high-energy accelerators. And so the first shielding for these accelerators, beside that which was done in-place (i.e., by adding lead or concrete around newly constructed accelerators until the measured radiation was reduced to tolerable levels) was done by high-energy physicists in their spare time using the physics they were in the process of learning -- a sort of bootstrap operation. Sometimes the physics was known (to a degree) by theoretical considerations and could be described fairly precisely by mathematical formulae (e.g., proton accelerators); in other cases, the mathematical models were imprecise and there was more reliance upon empirical data and approximations (e.g., electron accelerators). These approximations carried over in the mathematics of shielding design, but were acceptable because the physicists of that time realized that beam targeting conditions were themselves so poorly known that any approximations made in the physics of radiation transport would be swamped out by these unknown beam loss considerations. Also, radiation measurements -- the kind made by health physicists outside shields -- were themselves crudely imprecise. Health physicists had a saying that they seldom made measurements which were accurate to better than 20 percent, and that was at their best. H. DeStaebler, when shielding the original linac for SLAC, often remarked that the physics and the beam loss scenarios would never produce numbers which could be believed to better than a factor of 3. We will take a high energy electron accelerator (the linac at SLAC) to illustrate how shielding was done. For an electron accelerator, both photons and neutrons are important; photons dominate thin shields at all electron energies and neutrons dominate very thick shields when the electron energy is above a few hundred MeV. Photoneutron production was divided in the very beginning into three groups: 1) Giant resonance (GR) -- neutrons with an evaporation-like spectrum, with an average energy near 1 MeV and an upper energy around 20 MeV; 2) neutrons from pseudodeuteron production (later, called Mid-energy neutrons) with energies to 100 plus MeV; and 3) neutrons from photopion production (HEN) -- from single-pion production with a threshold near 200 MeV, and double-pion production with a threshhold near 400 MeV and upper energies up to the incident electron energy. The angular production of these three groups were each parameterized for inclusion in a computer shielding program (initially called SHIELD, but in its present incarnation known as SHIELD11). The energy spectra were assumed from measurements (where available) or theory, and were constant for all angles. Photons were included mostly by parameterizing measurements. At first, the target geometry was assumed to be a four-inch diameter cylinder of iron with the beam striking the center of one face, the cylinder being about 17 radiation lengths long. For shorter or longer cylinders, the photon leakage out the end was corrected assuming an attenuation according to the minimum in the attenuation coefficient. The same was done for cylinders whose diameters were different from the standard one. Later, as the computer program became more sophisticated, beam targeting for photons could be one of two geometries; 1) a standard cylinder, beam into the face; or 2) a flat plate with the beam striking one surface at a glancing angle, the plate being either thick or thin, with the radiation leakage numbers coming from measurements made at SLAC, DESY and KEK. All in all, these and other approximations were considered acceptable to do a reasonably accurate job of shielding. The first computer programs used in shielding design were simple ones which essentially were little more than calculators to speed up repetitive pencil-and-paper calculations, both using measured angular spectra. In parallel with these simple programs was the introduction and developement of Monte Carlo methods in the production and transport of radiation-- where the actual physical processes found in nature were duplicated by a computer. Of course these programs were only as good as the understanding of the physical processes which went into them -- which meant that high energy physics experiments whose purpose was to increase our knowledge of the basic structure of matter became the basic stepping stones to simulating what was happening within the world of radiation transport. In step with high energy physics then came radiation transport programs which could simulate what was happening to the radiation generated and transported through accelerator structures and shielding much more accurately than simple programs using many approximations. An example of such a radiation transport code for an electron accelerator is the EGS (Electron-Gamma Shower) code developed at SLAC for high-energy electron beams (though it has now matured to where it handles all energies of electrons or photons from a few electron volts up to the multi-Tev region). In the Monte Carlo process, a starting particle (or photon, or whatever) is allowed to interact within known constraints just as it would in nature. A random number generator is spun to see which particles are then generated (following rules already determined from measurements and theory), their angles and energies, and one by one, the particles are followed, each interacting with more atoms or particles according to the known rules of nature (or probabilities) until the last particle has lost all its energy and has `disappeared' from the process at which time, another particle is selected and the process begins anew. This continues until enough particles have been followed to give a good representation of a real event in nature. In this way, the actual processes in nature can be emulated to an accuracy that is astounding, to say the least, when enough particles have been followed to iron out any statistical variations. What this means is that we're emulating nature itself within the computer, limited only by our knowledge of the physics we put into it, and by the statistics (the number of interactions) we want. Usually, millions of particles can be followed, sometimes within seconds or minutes, the only limit being computer time, and thus the resulting answers are often accurate to less than a percent (again with the caution that the numbers are only as good as the physics involved). The original Monte Carlo radiation transport programs were relatively simple and restrictive -- the precursor of the EGS program, for example, was only for photons in lead within a narrow energy range. Today, the EGS program is for any and all materials, photons, electrons, positrons, all energies, with other particle generations included, such as pions, muons, neutrons, etc., and is used for such diverse problems as CAT and PET scanning in medical dosimetry, synchrotron radiation studies, and so forth. I'm not sure how many people at that time realized the future potential of Monte Carlo programs, or how soon that future would arrive. Back in the sixties and seventies, computers were very large, somewhat slow, and centralized, and in most cases, very busy, computer time being shared by physicists, health physicists, engineers, personnel and accounting departments, and even libraries. It was difficult, and often impossible, to find enough computer time to do complete computer simulations, especially for shielding problems which had a much lower priority than high-energy physics. So, problems were often truncated -- models were made to eliminate parts of the simulation, particles were only followed in certain regions, various biasing schemes were incorporated to speed up the process, etc., each leading to the possibility of introducing errors. But it was the best we could do at the time. Meanwhile, high-energy (or nuclear) physicists were generating more and more information, improving our understanding of the physics that goes into these computer programs and making for even greater accuracy. And the subsequent advent of good beam transport programs gave us the ability to determine just where beams might strike an accelerator structure (including beam halos or tails); coupling these with good radiation transport programs now gives us the means of determining just what types and energies of radiation will result from a beam targeting at any given location. But in the past few years we've seen a revolution of another kind; there's been an explosion of computer power. No longer are we all hooked into one massive computer with each customer vying for cpu time. Now we have small computers with quite large memories, very fast speeds and processing methods (e.g., parallel processing) which allow the shielding physicist (or health physicist) to have a dedicated machine with enough speed and memory that he can follow enough particles to give answers accurate to within a percent or less. Three separate advances have been combined to made one powerful tool for the shield designer: 1) advanced beam transport programs which can determine exactly where a beam is likely to intercept a beam-line component, 2) advanced cad-type of virtual space simulation which allows for the complete inclusion of all space -- beam-line components, shielding walls, penetrations, etc., and 3) advanced Monte Carlo radiation transport programs. We now have the makings of a `virtual reality' experiment, one which is as good as the physics which went into the programs (which can be very good). Still, people today don't walk around with computers large enough to do complex calculations that perhaps take many hours to get good statistics in the same way they use pocket calculators, even with remote telemetry. Many problems are so complex they require large amounts of computer time, both cpu time and time spend modeling the geometry. So the older, simpler computer programs are still being used. This type of computer program is acceptable only when one is satisfied that the generalizations used in the program fit into the realm of the problem at hand. They do, however, give answers within seconds or minutes, rather than having to wait for hours or days. Unfortunately the geometry must be simple, whereas in a true analogue computer simulation (using Monte Carlo, most likely), the geometry can be as complex as the actual problem is in reality. The answers using simplified programs are often good only to factors of 2 or 3, which is why there's no substitute for a good Monte Carlo radiation transport program. The only limits are on computer time and the bother of creating the actual geometry of the problem. But these limits are rapidly disappearing. One can easily imagine where radiation shielding may be within ten or fifteen years (or even much less), where the actual objects (or space) in the shielding problem would be `scanned' either from engineering drawings or using camcorders to give actual dimensions such that a full computer simulation of a complex room in three-dimensions could be generated within minutes (or seconds) and a full `virtual reality' experiment done minutes later giving complete radiation patterns everywhere in the vicinity, all with accuracies of less than a percent for any incident particle of any given energy, or for complex incident spectra! Is this science fiction or idle dreaming? Right now we have the ability to do all this; what's lacking is only for someone to write the sophisticated software. It would be nice, but not absolutely necessary, to have updated physics input data, even faster computers, easier complex-geometry simulation software, and programmers with time to devote to it. Accurate beam transport programs. Good Monte Carlo radiation transport programs. Fast, available computers. Complete access to computer time. Easy simulation of complex geometries. Virtual reality. We already have them all; though we may not know it, we're standing at the threshhold. ANSI N43.4 ACCELERATOR SAFETY COMMITTEE UPDATE S. Walker & J. Liu ====================================================================== James Liu and Scott Walker (the ANSI N43.4 Accelerator Safety Standard Co-chairs) had a meeting on April 1&2, 1996. This meeting was held to plan the activities of the ANSI writing group during the coming months. James and Scott reviewed the old document ANSI N43.1 "Radiological Safety in the Design and Operation of Particle Accelerators" (1978) and tried to make a determination if there are any new subjects the document should cover. A list of subjects the document will cover was set forth. It was decided that the subject list is flexible enough to include other topics without adding additional subjects to the document. The size of the writing sub-committees, reference documents which will be required reading and the major reference documents for use within the standard are also established. Since the basic outline of business has been prepared, it is tentatively planned for the committee to get together for a kick off meeting during the month of May (The idea is to get the committee moving as quickly as possible). We solicit your ideas concerning the scope of the new standard document. To be considered, ideas and comments should be submitted to either James or Scott by the end of May. The new scope will have to be approved by the ANSI N43 committee before the writing group can adapt it. Scott Walker Bldg.: MPF-21, RM-103, TA-53 Mail: MS-H815 ph: 505-667-5890 FAX: 505-665-5387 e-mail: walker_lawrence_s@lanl.gov ESH-1 Team Leader James C. Liu Stanford Linear Accelerator Center MS 48, P. O. Box 4349, Stanford, CA 94309 Phone: 415-926-4728, Fax: 415-926-3569 E-Mail: James@SLAC.STANFORD.EDU Section News (compiled by the Editor from reader input) ====================================================================== - According to information leaked by Ralph Thomas, two section members from Fermilab, Don Cossairt and Kamran Vaziri, will be teaching a one week course on Accelerator Radiation Physics in late January 1997, at UC Berkeley. This course is part of a two week session of the U. S. Particle Accelerator School. Don Cossairt has taught this course in the past sessions and it is apparently gaining in popularity. You will find more information on this subject in future IARPE issues. - Update on the 1997 midyear meeting in San Jose: the deadline for submission of abstracts, June 14, is approaching fast, but the HPS Secretariat has not received a single entry so far! A number of people promissed to submit papers, but everybody seems to wait till the last minute. If you plan to present a paper in San Jose, now is the time for action. This section came up with the topic of the meeting and is taking charge of the program - our members should keep the momentum and submit As Many papers As Reasonably Achievable (AMARA). Wade Patterson suggested the following: "In my opinion each officer and director of our section should submit a paper; on any subject they so choose, or by any one they designate. Perhaps they should be pushed to do so ?" I tend to agree with Wade - in times of need our elected officials should set example. NEWS FROM CORRESPONDENTS ====================================================================== News from CEBAF Bob May ---------------------------------------------------------------------- I. Few-Body Nuclear Properties Under Study at CEBAF CEBAF's second nuclear physics experiment got underway in early March. Using Hall C's two spectrometers, investigators are studying two-body photodisintegration of the deuteron, with a deuterium target irradiated by bremsstrahlung photons produced from the electron beam. The work exploits the new capabilities of CEBAF to extend previous measurements to higher momentum transfer. The collaboration involves some 90 scientists from 19 institutions; Roy Holt of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is spokesperson. In the present experiment's first week, despite a few short-lived problems mainly with injector and magnet hardware, the accelerator has progressed well toward matching the performance that followed the previously reported November startup of the CEBAF physics program. Before the late-December shutdown, cavity gradient averaged above 6 MeV/m, 20% over specification, and the average cavity Q of 5 x 10^9 was twice specification. The 2 K refrigerator supported superconducting operation with greater than 99% availability. Emittance exceeded the 2 x 10^-9 m design goal; energy spread at 2.8 x 10^-5 exceeded its 10^-4 baseline specification, nearly reaching its 2.5 x 10^-5 design goal. Capability was demonstrated for three interleaved, independently variable-current bunch trains to be sent from the injector through the accelerator. The adoption of EPICS (Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System) is clearly paying off. With two linacs, nine recirculation arc beam lines, and over 2200 magnets, machine complexity is comparable to that of LEP. Up time was above 80%. Preparations for three-hall operation, including polarized beam operation, were continued during the scheduled January downtime, followed by accelerator, spectrometer, and cryotarget tune-up. Preparations focused in particular on readying the following: -The Hall C Moller polarimeter for polarized beam. -The Lambertson magnet and the RF separators for three-hall simultaneous beam delivery. -The beam line into Hall A for first beam in April. -The beam current monitor systems for the personnel safety and machine protection systems to allow, after appropriate demonstration, full-power operation under the terms of the Accelerator Readiness Review process. [Typographical note: special character, "o" with backslash-like diagonal, needed in "Moller."] II. CEBAF to Hold Formal Dedication With experiments now underway at the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility to bridge the quark and hadronic descriptions of nuclear matter, the laboratory will be formally dedicated on Friday, May 24. Besides the ceremony itself, events will include receptions and tours. The dedication was scheduled to coincide with the Particles and Nuclei International Conference (PANIC96) in nearby Williamsburg, co-hosted May 22 to 28 by CEBAF and the College of William and Mary. Dedication guests are expected from the conference, the wider science and technology community, the Department of Energy, all levels of government, and from Newport News and the surrounding area. For more information, please contact: Linda Ware CEBAF Public Information Officer 12000 Jefferson Avenue Newport News, VA 23606 (804) 249-7689 fax: (804)249-7398 ware@cebaf.gov III. First Beam to Hall A at CEBAF First beam was delivered to CEBAF Experimental Hall A at 12:02 a.m. on 18 April 1996. At 62 minutes from the start of the process, a 12 microampere, single-pass, 845 MeV, 60 Hz, 2% duty factor, loss-free beam was delivered on target. The beam was run for several hours for beam line diagnostics. In subsequent operation, the RF separator was used to inject the beam into the Hall A beam line. Two-beam separation was also demonstrated. This development sets the stage for providing simultaneous beams to all three experimental halls. In addition, the accelerator has now been run at a full 1 GeV for one pass, implying acceleration capability for five-pass operation at 5 GeV, 25% over the 4 GeV specification. Beam has also been run from the polarized source through the full 45 MeV injector. News from LANL Scott Walker ---------------------------------------------------------------------- LANSCE Operations Update For those of you who haven't heard, the name of LAMPF (Los Alamos Meson Factory) was officially changed to LANSCE (Los Alamos Neutron Scattering Center) this past fall. The mission of the facility was also officially changed from nuclear physics to that of neutron scattering experiments. At the same time, the DOE operations office was changed from Energy Research (ER) to Defense Programs (DP). LANSCE'S research programs are now aimed at materials research, accelerator production of tritium (APT), and stock pile stewardship. This change of mission has lead shutting down our main experimental area (Area A). Only two months of nuclear physics operations and seven months of radiation damage experiments remain before Area A is officially decommissioned. Plans to make Area A, a long pulse spallation source are now beginning to gel. If the new source is installed, Area A will have to be torn apart and rebuilt from the concrete floor up. The activation along the old beam line is such that the project will be a major challenge for the coming years. The former LANSCE facility is now called the Manual Lujan Jr. Neutron Scattering Center (MLNSC). MLNSC is in the process of starting an upgrade which will make target changes easier, increase the beam intensity from 75 A to +100 A, install an ultra-cold neutron beam line, and install two explosives neutron radiography beam lines. The LANSCE run cycle is scheduled to run from July 1 to November 30 with a two month break and then again from February 1 through June 30. The facility will then be shut down for 9 months to a year while the MLNSC upgrade is completed. LANSCE will then operate in 8-9 month run cycles. The life of the facility has been increased at least five to ten years. LANSCE has also become the home of the APT low energy demonstration accelerator to support the Savanna River tritium production accelerator development program. The low energy development accelerator will be a CW, 125-200 mA, 40 MeV proton accelerator. News from SLAC ---------------------------------------------------------------------- I. Abstract for 1997 midyear meeting in San Jose The SLAC Radiation Physics Department is planning to submit abstracts for 30th Midyear Topical Meeting of the Health Physics Society, to be held in San Jose, California next January. With the June 14 deadline rapidly approaching, we thought that it might be useful to share some of the topics that we are considering: - Characterization of Neutron and Photon Radiation Emanating from Varian Medical Accelerator Heads - Radiation Protection Problems Associated with the Asymmetric B-Factory at SLAC - Arrival-Time Distributions for Moderator-Type Detectors in Pulsed-Neutron Fields - A New Type of Neutron Spectrometer from Thermal Energies to Hundreds of MeV - The Next Linear Collider: Conceptual Design Shielding Studies The 1987 symposium was a great success and we are looking forward to the 1996 meeting with enthusiasm. Ralph Nelson II. DOE Meeting An update on the status of radiation protection rules applicable to US DOE accelerator facilities was provided at the "Ninth Semiannual ES&H Coordination Meeting" hosted by the Office of Energy Research at Gaithersburg, Maryland on April 16-18, 1996. The following notes include parenthetical comments/observations made by me in "[]" brackets. A proceedings of the meeting is expected to be available in the next two months. During the "10CFR834 Implementation/10CFR835 Lessons Learned Workshop" chaired by Paul Neeson (DOE/CH) on April 15, 1996, Barry Parks (ER-8.2) provided the segment on "10CFR835 Lessons Learned" with key factors identified as follows: 1. Guidance: The receipt of the 10CFR835 guidance documents came after the final rule went into place. The lesson learned is to complete necessary guidance documents before the Environmental Radiation Protection Program (ERPP) required by 10CFR834 is due. It was noted by the DOE/EH representatives at the meeting that this was nearly impossible since the final negotiated form of the final rule would only be known at the time of publication in the Federal Register [presently expected to be in June/July 1996 for 10CFR834] and the guidance documents' final versions require precise knowledge of the final rule's requirements. 2. Inspection Criteria: Criteria that would have indicated to the preparers of the Radiation Protection Program (RPP) plans what audit/oversight criteria would be were not delivered prior to the RPP due date. [Note: There was a document prepared by DOE for use in assessment of 10CFR835 compliance but it was only recently made available: DOE-HDBK-1089-95, "Guidance for Identifying, Reporting, and Tracking Nuclear Safety Noncompliances"--the applicability of which is of some question for non-Nuclear Facility accelerator labs.] 3. Transition Facility Approval: Different program secretarial offices were involved in RPP approvals for multiprogram facilities [for example, even most accelerator single purpose labs have EM and ER program elements]. The lesson to apply to 10CFR834 implementation was to have approvals done in parallel if at all possible. 4. RPRIMS Database: The Radiological Control Coordinating Committee (RCCC) set up software to facilitate completing the RPP production process (called RPRIMS). It was not a success due to lack of time [arrived in an incompletely debugged version in July 1994 but the RPP implementation plans were due January 1995]. The lesson learned was to get the customers involved. The software did not meet the needs of many of the potential users. If software is developed for 10CFR834, it should be an optional, not required, tool. 5. Level of Detail in RPPs: How much detail was needed in the implementation plan? Different programs [such as, ER and EM] had different expectations. 6. Review Group Schedules: It was felt that different programs operated independently on different schedules not expediting the RPP approvals. It was believed that having the ERPP approvals handled at the Operations/Field Office level would help alleviate this problem. 7. Final Level of Approval: All involved program directors had to sign. This proved to be less of a problem for the RPPs than had been anticipated due to the fact that essentially no decisions regarding resources [money] were required. The RCCC felt that in cases where incremental resources were not needed the approval process should not need program office directors' approvals. An additional portion of the workshop addressing "10CFR834 Implementation" was provided by Andy Wallo and Hal Peterson (EH-41). Two points of particular note for the US DOE accelerator community came out of this segment as follows: o 10CFR834 Implementation Schedule [Tentative]: Final Rule pulished in Federal Register July 1996 Final Rule August 1996 ERPP Submittals August 1997 Final Compliance February 1998 o Status of 10CFR834 Subpart F Subpart F, "Requirements for the Protection of Biota", had an additional section published in the Federal Register in February 1996 regarding the protection of terrestrial biota. Based on the public comments received [including nearly all US DOE accelerator facilities which were very concerned due to the implications for earth shielded accelerator housings], it was indicated that Subpart F would not be incorporated in the final rule at this time. Subpart F was expected to be identified as "Reserved" in the June/July 1996 Federal Register publication of the final rule. Considerable additional discussion on the ERPP process took place at this workshop. Additional workshops on "Accelerator Safety" chaired by DeVaughn Nelson (ER-8) and "Conduct of Operations" chaired by Ray Schwartz (ER-8) covered topics of interest to accelerator radiation protection persons, which will be summarized in the proceedings. Mike Grissom, III. "Hineutron" listserv For those interested in high energy neutron spectrometry and dosimetry - a listserv group "hineutron" was set up a few months ago. You can subscribe to it in a similar way as you would for iarpe, i.e. you need to send an e-mail message to listserv@mailbox.slac.stanford.edu, containing the following in the body of the message: subscribe hineutron end Within the next two or three days I will move an archive file called "hineutron" to an anonymous ftp area, where you can retrieve it and read messages that accumulated so far. For access by anonymous ftp, do the following: ftp ftp@slac.stanford.edu enter "anonymous" at the user prompt and your e-mail address as password. Once you are logged in, type cd /users/vylet The file hineutron will be in this directory. Those with afs access don't need to use ftp, you can get directly to the directory /afs/slac/public/users/vylet. Please give me a couple of days to set up this area. If you encounter problems with subscribing or getting to the archive file, I would be glad to help you. Vashek Vylet News from Fermilab Dave Boehnlein ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Preparations continue here for Fermilab's rapidly approaching fixed target run. The two large collider detectors at CDF and D0 have been rolled out of the Tevatron tunnel. These detectors (and possibly some experimenters) have not seen the light of day in four years. They (the detectors) will be upgraded by their respective collaborations for Collider run II, which is scheduled to begin in 1999. Meanwhile, physicists will continue to analyze data collected during Collider run I. Fixed target operations are scheduled to begin in mid-May and this promises to make life more interesting for those of us in radiological protection: More beamlines, more targets, more loss points, more widely spread out experimental areas. There will be ten experiments running in the three fixed target beamline areas (proton, meson, neutrino). These beamlines have been "mothballed" during the collider run and our Research Division has been hard at work over the last several months making sure they will be ready when the beam is. Finally, work still continues on the Main Injector project. This shutdown was an opportune time to work on the 8 GeV beamline tunnel that will bring protons from the Booster synchrotron to the Main Injector and good progress is being made. News from CERN Manfred Hoefert ---------------------------------------------------------------------- CERN's contribution to the IARPE Newsletter will be very short this month because I have not much time to write. The reason is that RP is submerged with allegations from a group of Supergreen people in France called CRII-RAD about having spread radioactivity into the environment. This means that we have to defend the Organization and our work in front of TV and the press. I myself had a 17 hour working day when following a press conference at CERN I had to jet to Zurich. There I was put life into the hot chair of Swiss German Television to answer quite reasonable questions however based on mostly false information. When I returned home after midnight I really felt that I had earned my money. On 30 April RP will meet with the Host States Authorities in matters of radiation protection, a meeting that had long be scheduled and that had initially been devoted to a presentation by Lutz Moritz on his calculation of new release limits for CERN, but will now discuss the common approach of CERN and its Host States against the allegations by CRII-RAD. I would have liked to tell you about our two new physicists Drs. Marco Silari and Thomas Otto and other more pleasant subjects. All this however and more about CRII-RAD hopefully in the next newsletter. JOB AVAILABLE ====================================================================== Position: RSO Salary: $40,000 - $70,000 Location: Atlanta, GA THERAGENICS, a fast growing manufacturer of therapeutic radiological devices for treatment of prostate cancer is searching for a RADIATION SAFETY OFFICER with a M.S. or PH.D. in Health Physics. We currently have two cyclotrons in operation and have two that are being delivered this year. The individual will fill a dual role of RSO and act as our chief Health Physicist in the contact with medical facilities and research and development of how our product (radioactive seeds inserted for prostate cancer)interact in our patient's body. Please contact: Bill Kasper 44 Powers Ferry Road Atlanta, GA 30327 phone: 404-843-1807 fax: 404-843-0970 HOW TO SUBSCRIBE / UPDATE YOUR E-MAIL ADDRESS ====================================================================== To add yourself to the mailing list for the IARPE Newsletter, send an e-mail message to listserv@mailbox.slac.stanford.edu The body of your message should contain the following command: subscribe iarpe-l Please don't forget to update your e-mail address if you move, change jobs or just change your computing environment. The update consists in canceling the old by 'unsubscribe' and submitting a new subscription, as illustrated below: unsubscribe iarpe-l your_old_email_address subscribe iarpe-l end If the body of your message, as in this example, contains more than a single line/command, it is good practice to finish with the 'end' command, especialy if your mailer adds a signature. If you experience problems with subscribing/updating, please send me an e-mail to vylet@slac.stanford.edu and I will do it for you. CLOSING THOUGHTS ====================================================================== Conversation would be vastly improved by the constant use of four simple words: I do not know. -- Andre Maurois