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) ====================================================================== May/June 1997 Circulation: 201 Vol.6, #3 ====================================================================== OFFICERS OF THE ACCELERATOR SECTION President: Lutz Moritz, TRIUMF President-Elect: Vashek Vylet, SLAC Past President: Bob May, TJNAF Secretary: Scott Walker, LANL Treasurer: Carter Ficklen, TJNAF Newsletter Editor: James C. Liu, SLAC Directors: Wes M. Dunn (1999) Steve Musolino (1999), BNL Jeff Leavey (1998), IBM Tracy Tipping (1998), KSU Don Cossairt (1997), FNAL Lorraine Day (1997), LSU ====================================================================== CONTENTS From the Editor From the President Feature Article The Control of Prompt Radiation Hazards at Accelerator Facilities (by CASOG Committee) News from Five Correspondents: CERN, KEK, KSU, LSU, TJNAF How to Subscribe or Update Subscription Closing Thoughts ====================================================================== >From the Editor James C. Liu ====================================================================== It is again close to our annual HPS meeting. Please note that the accelerator session is on Thursday morning, which will be followed by the Accelerator Section business meeting. In this issue the Section President annouces the slate of candidates for our offices from the open nomination process and also passes on a request from the Editor of the HPS Newsletter. We then have a feature article from the Section's ad hoc committee (Committee on the Accelerator Safety Order and Guidance). The article is a condensed (still long) version of their more complete, over-20-page, report, which addresses the committee's view (or advocacy) on risk-based regulatory standards and radiation safety systems for accelerator facilities. Readers are strongly encouraged to comment on this report (send comments to the chair G. Stapleton at . We also have five news contributions: CERN's current status, the SARE3 and SATIF3 meetings at KEK, an introduction to James R. Macdonald Laboratory at KSU, and brief news from CAMD of LSU and CEBAF (Jefferson Lab). For those who are interested in previous IARPE issues, please visit the web version of the Newsletter at: http://www.slac.stanford.edu/~james/iarpe.html and check the Related Web Sites (IARPE ARCHIVES). THANK YOU and GOODBYE. My term as the IARPE Editor expires with this issue. I would like to thank all the correspondents, contributors, and all of you readers. As all editors know, there would be no newsletter without the contributions and subscription. Also thanks to Lutz Moritz for his advice and the help from the two Associate Editors, Ted de Castro of LBL and Scott Schwahn of TJNAF. Best wishes to you all. ==================================================================== >From the President Lutz Moritz ==================================================================== Our nomination process has led to the following nominations for the offices which will become vacant at the San Antonio meeting: President-elect: Carter Ficklen (TJNAF) James Liu (SLAC) Steve Musolino (BNL) Treasurer: James Liu (SLAC) Editor: Ted de Castro (LBL) Scott Schwahn (TJNAF) Directors (2): Bob May (TJNAF) Henry Kahnhauser (BNL) Keith Welch (TJNAF) This is an excellent slate of candidates, and I am sure that any of them will be able to contribute their skills to the projects that are coming up. See you in San Antonio. I have been asked by Gen Roessler, the Editor of the HPS Newsletter, to pass on the following request: "The HPS Newsletter needs your Section's help. In our June issue of the Newsletter, we announced that we are initiating three new features -- the Ops Center, UpData, and Reflections. (See the June editorial for details on these new features.) Our goal is to better respond to the needs of our readers. Our approach is to coordinate this effort with help of the Chapters, Branches and Sections." Gen is asking for ideas for articles that would fit any of these features, and for us to identify individuals who can prepare and review the articles. You can contact her at the new email address . ==================================================================== FEATURE ARTICLE ==================================================================== The Control of Prompt Radiation Hazards at Accelerator Facilities Committee on the Accelerator Safety Order and Guidance S. Musolino (BNL) S. Rokni (SLAC) G. Stapleton (TJNAF) chairman M. Torres (ANL) O. van Dyck (LANL) K. Vaziri (FERMILAB) Foreword Recently some interest has been aroused over the early draft of a document written by a sub-committee from the Accelerator Section of the Health Physics Society entitled: The Control of Prompt Radiation Hazards at Accelerator Facilities. This article picks out some of the salient pieces of that draft to show the thinking of the authors and the possible shape of the revised document. 1.0 Introduction The early draft was a written response to a hazard classification scheme set out in the guidance notes to the US Department of Energy Orders for the safety of accelerators (USDOE 1993). The concern of the accelerator community was that the DOE scheme discounted the use of integrated safety systems including those that would rapidly terminate the beam in the event of unplanned beam loss. The early draft document was produced by a working group commissioned by the Committee on the Accelerator Safety Order and Guidance (CASOG), an ad hoc committee of the Accelerator Section of the Health Physics Society which was set up in 1994 by the Section's President, N. Ipe. The draft report was presented to the Accelerator Section at the HPS Annual Meeting in 1995. Subsequently, the DOE Accelerator Safety Order requirement for hazard classification was removed and, changes were begun in the manner some accelerator laboratories would be regulated, namely, the Necessary and Sufficient process (USDOE 1994a) was initiated. These developments to some extent overtook the need for the revised hazard classification scheme which was originally set out in the CASOG draft document so that work on producing a final report lapsed. However, many members of the Accelerator Section thought that the report contained useful information and would be of general value in stating the philosophy that already exists in the accelerator community with respect to the control of prompt radiation. Thus, at a meeting of the Accelerator Section in San Jose CA, January 1997, it was agreed that the draft CASOG paper on the control of prompt radiation hazards at accelerator facilities should be revised for publication. Interest in the topic was also sustained by continued contact within CASOG on changes in the regulatory system and by two papers published by a group member evolving from the draft report. The papers (van Dyck 1996, 1997) explored the conceptual difficulty with applying a "hazard-based" safety oversight system to accelerators and argued for "risk-based" oversight. These papers contributed greatly to sustaining interest and convincing the accelerator community that the preparation of this particular document would be a worthwhile objective. The first of the two papers mentioned above explored the conceptual difficulties that the current DOE's hazard-based regulatory framework and safety oversight system places on accelerators. Specifically, for large and complex accelerator facilities, determining the worst-case accident scenarios can be an endless exercise with little payoff seen in real safety. Probably everyone would be satisfied with risk-based management, if rational evaluation of risk were feasible. Without such an evaluation, facilities appear to be driven by DOE requirements and guidance to investment in a total shielding encasement at huge expense and little benefit. These discussions often end with the questions: how much risk is acceptable, and how can risk be quantified? Seeking possible answers to these questions is the goal of the final report. Although the work was initiated within the perspective of DOE funded facilities, it is hoped that the content will be of value to all accelerator facilities both national and international An early approach to the management of risk is exemplified in the now withdrawn USDOE Orders on Safety Analysis and Review System (USDOE 1981 & 1986) where a risk matrix was adopted. This scheme used a combination of consequence and probability to characterize the risk of a hazard in the matrix format of Table 1. The system is of course applicable to any kind of accident and not specifically related to any radiological "event", although the hazard considered in the DOE Order was directed towards inventories of nuclear materials. Table 1. Risk Matrix (Adapted from DOE-AL-5481.1b 1988) ======================================================================== Probability Per Year ----------------- -------------------------------------------------- CONSEQUENCE A-Likely B-Unlikely C-Extremely D-Incredible May Cause. . . Unlikely > 1E-2 < 1E-2 < 1E-4 < 1E-6 ------------------ -------------------------------------------------- I-Catastrophic Unacceptable Unacceptable Marginally Acceptable Deaths, or loss of Acceptable the facility/operation, or severe impact on the environment. ------------------ -------------------------------------------------- II-Critical Unacceptable Marginally Acceptable Acceptable Severe injury or Acceptable death to a worker, or severe occupational illness, or major damage to a facility/operation, or major impact on the environment. ------------------ -------------------------------------------------- III-Marginal Marginally Acceptable Acceptable Acceptable Minor injury, Acceptable or minor occupational illness, or minor impact on the environment, or moderate damage/impact to a facility/operation. ------------------ -------------------------------------------------- IV-Negligible Acceptable Acceptable Acceptable Acceptable No significant injury, occupational illness, or significant impact on the environment. ========================================================================= Perhaps the final difficulty CASOG saw was the notion that a rational regulatory system could be built on well-defined boundaries in consequence and probability, as in Table 1, based on subjective criteria, particularly non-fatal consequences which are much less frequent in irradiation incidents. 1.1 Radiation Protection Practices In addition to specifying adequate shielding, it is a common practice at accelerator laboratories to implement other systems of radiation safety. Examples are: administrative systems such as search and secure procedures in conjunction with key-tree type access control, the use of electrical or other types of contacts on entry doors and beam line stoppers connected to the safety interlock chain in addition to the normal engineered beam-safety devices. All these systems together provide adequate safety to personnel by preventing occupancy or access during beam-on conditions and likewise preventing errant beams from entering occupied areas. To safeguard them from costly damage, accelerators require a system of machine protection devices that are generally not included in any scheme of personnel safety. The reason for this is not that such systems are inherently less well engineered than those on personnel safety systems it is because such systems are essentially "open" to the accelerator operations crew to adjust or use in the most efficient way, nevertheless in the context of an overall integrated approach such machine protection devices have an important role in reducing the number of challenges to the personnel safety system and hence, enhancing the overall reliability of the personnel devices. Traditionally, the systematic approach to safety at research accelerators has not relied on any single element for the safety of personnel or protection of the machine. A high level of protection has been achieved through integration of systems including shielding, automatically-responding systems, and human response. These various elements provide the "defense-in-depth" approach that has been successful in accelerator, nuclear power and other industrial safety systems. Failure of one barrier or element will not result in complete loss of protection. The combined system, through redundancy and technical diversity, minimizes the risk due to total failure. 2.0 Risk-based Standards It is important to state that the safety systems we are concerned with in this note are primarily used for the protection of people against prompt radiation. Thus any failure of such a safety system could potentially result in some radiation exposure. However, not every safety system failure would result in an exposure. The failure might not occur during a challenge to the safety system, i.e., the fault might occur when the accelerator is running safely or the safety system could fail when challenged but no-one might be present in any exposed location. Thus there are many variables to take into account when assigning an appropriate level of reliability required. In addition it is important to understand the level of radiation insult that might occur on any system failure. Potential maximum exposures of a few rem should not require the elaborate and expensive systems that would be appropriate where the insult could be radiation exposure at the hundreds of rem level. This assessment of the consequences of system failure requires considerable understanding of the accelerator operational parameters, because estimates must be made of the instantaneous dose rate that might occur under given beam loss condition, and how long the fault condition could be expected to be sustained. Because of the extensive role of judgment by the accelerator designers, operators and radiation safety specialists, we believe that it is inappropriate to attempt to impose any arbitrary regulatory limits for any of these accelerator performance variables, whether dose rate or integrated time of exposure or even the probability of failure of any safety system. It is, however, important to provide a method that can assign a level of reliability to the various safety systems so that credit can be taken for each contribution to the overall combination. 2.1 Comparability with "Safe" Industries A rational basis for evaluation and regulation of risk from prompt radiation accidents is by comparison to mortality rates in safe industry. It is highly appropriate, because we are considering radiation insult, to consider the opinion of the International Commission on Radiological Protection, which "...believes that for the foreseeable future a valid method of judging the acceptability of the level of risk in radiation work is by comparing this risk with that for other occupations recognized as having high standards of safety, which are generally considered to be those in which the average annual mortality due to occupational hazards does not exceed 1E-4", (ICRP 1977a). Using this premise the Commission set a stochastic whole body limit for occupational practices at 5 rem per year. The Commission used the argument that the distribution of annual dose equivalents among a large group of workers had been shown to commonly fit a log normal distribution having an arithmetic mean of a tenth the limit with very few values approaching the limit. Thus, the Commission argued that the average risk in radiation occupations is comparable with the average risk in other safe industries (ICRP 1977b). The numerical value of a dose limit and the assumptions that go into deriving it are not critical here; the point is that the development of the limit starts from acceptance of a "safe industry standard" of a small but finite annual occupational mortality expectation. Twenty years after the value was put forth by the ICRP in 1977, a suitable goal for USDOE occupational fatalities, exclusive of transportation and construction activities, might be fewer than one per 100,000 worker-years. It is of interest that non-fatal effects (injury) represent a large fraction of the cost of accidents. However, ICRP indicated that non-fatal effects from radiation are much less frequent than non-fatal effects encountered in other safe occupations, and hence the inclusion of non-fatal effects would result in less restrictive dose limits. Therefore, as a first approximation, an assessment based on mortality can be considered conservative. The estimates of average annual beam loss and the assumptions for temporally and spatially averaging source terms are statistical; the notion that certain regions close to shield walls may or may not be occupied during the period when the machine is operational is clearly understood to result in average doses less than the design goal in a way somewhat analogous to the idea of setting a 5 rem annual whole body limit on exposure on the basis that average exposure results in one tenth this value. Finally the ultimate result of radiation exposure is assumed to be stochastic. Thus we conclude that the use of all radiation protection systems for accelerators is based on probability and that even the notion that shielding can be inadequate or that shielding calculations are inaccurate, is implicitly included in the common practice of adding factors of safety by, for example, adding an extra foot or so of concrete. However, it is acknowledged that because the function of structural protection systems such as shielding or distance is very simple to grasp, they are often erroneously regarded in a different light from electrically or mechanically engineered systems that usually depend on a response to some "event" such as a misdirected beam or a gate opening. Because of their apparent complexity it is necessary for engineers who design them to have a clear understanding of the reliability standards to which they should design. Hence we have to make suppositions about what could happen should such "response" type devices fail to function as designed, although similar suppositions could be made with equal validity about failure of structural systems should we desire to do so. 2.2 Accidents Resulting in Mortality from Acute Effects At most large accelerators, workers routinely occupy beam areas while beam is on in nearby beamlines. Interlocked systems are used to prevent beam delivery to the occupied area. However, it must be acknowledged that there is a finite probability of hardware failure, or failure to evacuate the area prior to starting beam delivery, in either case exposing personnel in the area. The consequence of such an accident could result in death from acute radiation syndrome. In this extreme case no credit can be taken for the stochastic nature of low level radiation exposure. Five DOE accelerators have been operating for more than two decades with ~100 radiation workers per site routinely exposed to the radiation hazards of beam tunnel entries, with no fatalities (or to our knowledge even severe overexposures), thus indicating on the order of < one fatality per 10,000 worker-years. These facilities generally have similar procedures and safety systems, including redundant interlock chains, as reflected in (SLAC 1988). Redundant safety systems are also common for critical applications in industrial, commercial, and consumer safety, such as with motor vehicle brakes, helping to keep equipment-caused accidental deaths a very small fraction of the risks of ordinary life. Thus reliability of interlocks used to prevent direct beam exposure sets the standard for reliability of systems used to prevent exposure to less-than-lethal doses of radiation. 2.3 Accidents Resulting in Stochastic Effects As we discussed above, a suitable standard for accelerator safety systems should be based on an overall fatality rate of 1E-5 per worker-year. Furthermore, assuming that the average radiation worker is exposed less than 10% of the time on-site, this will then imply a negligible individual risk of 1E-6 per year. Non-radiation workers at the accelerator facility might be expected to be exposed at the 1% level with a consequential mortality risk at even lower levels. Although very high doses can result in death, one would expect that most radiation accidents - at least those outside beam tunnels - would result in less-than-lethal doses for which the long-term health effect is stochastic with risk of mortality 1E-4 per rem (ICRP 1977c; linear model). Therefore, for an accidental exposure, under fault conditions of a few 10's of rem the system failure rate need only be ~1E-3 per year to achieve comparability with overall mortality rates in safe industries. It is interesting that a much higher occupational risk at the level of one fatality per century (~1E-2) from stochastic effects is already implicitly accepted by allowing the DOE accelerator complex to accumulate ~100 man-rem collective dose each year - again using the linear model. For members of the public, who can be assumed exposed 100% of the time, mortality risk would be acceptable at the 1E-6 per year level. Because the estimated annual mortality is predicated on both the reliability of the safety system and the level of radiation exposure, and on the assumption that the amount of radiation exposure to the off-site general public from accelerators is not likely to be greater than a few 10's of millirem, the 1E-6 per year level can still be sustained at the 1E-3 failure probability. 2.4 General Approach to Determine the Required Reliability of Safety Systems Accepting the premise that radiation exposure results in a risk of mortality and that failure of a protection system is also stochastic, we can equate the probability of mortality with the product of the reliability of the system and the level of radiation insult, should the safety system fail. This is a very simple concept but adequate for our purpose of screening the levels of reliability we must expect from our equipment: annual probability of mortality (R) = reliability of system (P) x radiation dose (H) x risk coeff (F) In this equation, P is the probability of failure of the safety system and the product H x F is an estimate of the potential radiation insult. It can be seen that for a large potential radiation dose we require higher reliability devices justifying the higher cost of development and verification. In the derivation of the reliability of the devices we need to include estimates of the likelihood of the system of devices being challenged by an errant beam, and an estimate of the probability of a failure of the system of devices resulting in personnel exposure. It should be emphasized that the probability P results from the combination of many system conditions such as the duplication or multiplicity of interlock chains and devices, the length of time during which the system is required to function properly, etc. The highest level of protection needed at most facilities is for beam area occupancy, and Section 2.1 presented a mean time between failure (MTF) of 1E-5 worker-years as the standard. Depending upon the dose level anticipated in the exclusion areas (outside the shielding and/or barriers), a shorter MTF, lower by one or more orders of magnitude, can be accepted. 3.0 Assessing Reliability of Safety Systems Given enough information about the reliability of its elements, the reliability of a system can be predicted. The mathematical foundation is well-established (Martz 1991) and there are established processes to use, including tables and computer programs. The approach becomes difficult and perhaps not very meaningful to apply starting from the circuit-level of detail with systems as complex and unique as the interlocks at a large accelerator. However, these concepts can be useful in comparing or optimizing simple combinations of system building blocks. Testing and documentation can establish an upper limit on the length of time a subsystem in service was unavailable to respond safely, or the number of times a subsystem failed to respond safely. This can provide an empirical basis for estimating the unavailability of combinations of systems. It could be practical to accumulate data in a few years which might help support a claim of unavailability (fractional time out of service) at the 1E-3 to 1E-4 level for redundant systems, but the analysis is highly dependent upon knowledge of common-cause or correlated failure modes. Two DOE-sponsored reports (Mahn 1995, Neogy 1996) gave reliability ranges for safety systems classified by level of redundancy and technological diversity. For example, a dual nondiverse interlock chain (two identical strings) is shown in Mahn's Table 7 with a demand/failure ratio of 200 to 20,000. In other words, at the low end, it is expected to fail once per 200 demands. A dual fully diverse system is shown as fifty times more reliable. Again, based on these criteria, it is not difficult to reach the reliability required to protect personnel outside exclusion areas. If the dual-diverse system meets whatever quality requirement necessary to achieve the high end of the scale, it is adequate for personnel safety inside beam delivery areas even with very high hazards. Accelerator experience may indicate that these numbers are reasonably conservative. The reports gave many qualifications on the context for the estimates and references to the quality standards that provide the claimed reliability levels. 3.1 Standards The preceding discussion in Section 3.0 has shown that solid and quantitative predictive evaluation of safety is very difficult. However, DOE accelerators have accumulated thousands of man-years of relatively safe operation using a somewhat standardized approach (SLAC 1988). Within this envelope of recognized community standards, the facilities continue inventive development of instruments and systems suited to their requirements. In Section 2.1 we introduced the notion of comparability with "safe" industry as providing an underlying basis for determining the required levels of reliability of safety systems. This notion can also be sustained at the more practical level by comparing the standards and systems used in such everyday hazards of living such as elevators, railway trains, electrical appliances, electrical enclosures, power lines, security vaults, fire alarms and sprinkler systems, etc. We believe that adequate safety for prompt radiation is best found by staying within the envelope of good practices developed over the last half-century in the accelerator community. These practices are similar to the measures used to manage risk in other areas of life. We encourage further development of standards embodying these good practices, so that continual revisiting of the issue of quantification of risk can be avoided. 4.0 Conclusions We argue that no safety system is totally free from risk. We show that, by utilizing a simple concept, the level of reliability needed for safety systems used to control exposures of differing severity can be estimated. The simple concept used is based on the mortality rates in safe industries and the stochastic risk factors for radiation exposure. It is stressed that while the methods proposed result in numerical estimates, these numbers must not be regarded as prescriptive in any way. They cannot replace the judgment and knowledge of an experienced accelerator radiation safety expert. We hope to achieve a means of demonstrating that regulatory prescriptions of excessively small failure probabilities at the system or device level are not necessary or appropriate for accelerators in achieving the safety standards acceptable in safe industries. Acknowledgments Many people contributed to the discussions which helped to produce this report, in particular the CASOG sub-committee would like to acknowledge the advice and encouragement of Robert Youngblood, who very kindly read the earlier drafts and made many helpful suggestions. References ICRP 1977a; "Recommendations of the International Commission on Radiological Protection", Annals of the ICRP, ICRP Publication 26, Volume 1 No 3 page 19 sect 96 1977, Pergamon Press, New York (1977). ICRP 1977b; "Recommendations of the International Commission on Radiological Protection", Annals of the ICRP, ICRP Publication 26, Volume 1 No 3 page 20 sect 99-100 1977, Pergamon Press, New York (1977). ICRP 1977c; "Recommendations of the International Commission on Radiological Protection", Annals of the ICRP, ICRP Publication 26, Volume 1 No 3 page 12 sect 60 1977, Pergamon Press, New York (1977). Mahn 1995: Mahn, J.A., Hannaman, G.W, and Kryska, P.M, "Qualitative Methods for Assessing Risk", Sandia Report SAND95-0320 (Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, April 1995). See http://infoserve.library.sandia.gov/sd950320.pdf. Martz 1991; Martz, H.F. and Waller, R.A, "Bayesian Reliability Analysis", (Krieger, Malabar, FL 1991). Neogy 1996: Neogy, Hanson, & Davis (BNL), Letter Report DOE-EH 33 8/30/96 NRC 1989; "Procedures for Treating Common Cause Failures in Safety and Reliability Studies - Analytical Background and Techniques", NUREG/CR-4780, EPRI NP-5613 Vol 2. US Department of Commerce National Technical Information Service (1989) SLAC 1988, "Health Physics Manual of Good Practices for Accelerator Facilities", SLAC Report 327, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, April (1988). USDOE 1981 & 1986,* U.S. Department of Energy, Safety Analysis and Review System, 5481.1A, (1981) & updated 5481.1B (1986). USDOE 1988*, U.S. Department of Energy, Safety Analysis and Review System, AL5481.1B, Albuquerque Operations Office, January 27 (1988). USDOE 1993*, U.S. Department of Energy, Safety of Accelerator Facilities, 5480.25, (1993). USDOE 1994a*, U.S. Department of Energy, Criteria for the Department's Standards Program, DOE/EH/-0416, Office of Environment Safety and Health, (August 1994). van Dyck 1996; O. van Dyck; Trends in Prompt Radiation Risk Management at DOE Accelerator Facilities. Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Conference on the Application of Accelerators in Research and Industry [CAARI 96], AIP Conference Proceedings (in press). van Dyck 1997; O. van Dyck; Radiation Risk Management at DOE Accelerators, in Health Physics of Radiation-Generating Machines, p. 81 (Proceedings of the 30th Midyear Topical Meeting of the Health Physics Society, January, 1997). *Available via http://www.explorer.doe.gov:1776/htmls/directives.html. The Guidance and Interpretations are available only via http://www.er.doe.gov/production/esh/accelr8r.html, which also provides link to the Orders.] ====================================================================== NEWS FROM CORRESPONDENTS ====================================================================== News from CERN Manfred Hoefert Following the usual winter shut down we were sitting in our starting blocks ready for the 1997 start-up of CERN's accelerators when on Tuesday (not Friday!) May 13th at 6:25 AM a fire destroyed a radio frequency power supply in one of the SPS/LEP service buildings. What already appeared serious enough turned into a nightmare when it was discovered that the combustion of PCB had led to the contamination of the entire building with acid soot. An important and expensive cleaning operation started immediately involving at times 100 people from a specialized firm working around the clock. In the words of the SPS (Super Proton Synchrotron) Coordinator: "A detailed schedule of how to accelerate the [cleaning] work is being drawn-up in order that the building can be handed back as soon as possible to the SPS for the start-up. Based on the experience gained in the past week, the original estimation that the SPS would not restart before the beginning of July still holds. In fact, the more realistic scenario which is emerging is that having the SPS re-start in the middle of July. Some time would then be needed before the beam is delivered to the experiments." Luckily no radioactivity was involved in the fire, a fact that however did not make RP group workless. Presently the group is much occupied with paper work. Whilst the Radiological Impact Report for the LHC (established with the help of our Section President Lutz) now is history I am at present much solicited by the French INB (Installation Nucleaire de Base) procedure for LEP! Yes, it is LEP not LHC! A team of French experts has written an appreciation of CERN's final 1994 version of the Safety Report for this moribund machine. The stop of LEP operation is scheduled for the end of 1999! With some CERN colleagues (not only radiation questions are involved) I have already spent a full day on the outskirts of Paris in sometimes rather stormy discussions on issues where our radiation protection practice follows the rather more pragmatic Swiss model than the somewhat more legalistic French attitude. It is sad when, while in Paris, you can claim as your only private enterprise the buying of a newspaper. Following these preliminary discussions the French permanent group who has to examine the Safety Report came to CERN for a one day visit two weeks ago. Finally a CERN delegation will go to Paris on 11 June, 1997 to a meeting with this permanent group, again somewhere out of town. Until that date RP group is busy formalizing, i.e. writing down some of the long standing and well known practices for the benefit of the INB procedure. Well, I must admit that there is more behind this than meets the eye. In a world where more and more work at CERN is performed by contract personnel it is important that procedures and prescription in matters of safety are clearly laid down. This is done for RP in Complementary Documents (complementary to the 1996 Radiation Safety Manual). These documents are presently under revision. Radiation protection will survive at CERN as we see two new young faces around: Regina Mueller, a fellow, who works with Thomas Otto for a period of two years on the track recognition and automatic scanning of neutron films whilst Herbert Vincke, a doctoral student, supervised by Graham Stevenson will study the radiological aspects of the long base-line neutrino project. A selection board for the announced RP post of an engineer or physicist replacing Jan W. N. Tuyn (leaving at the beginning of next year) will take place on 30 June with 14 interested but not always interesting candidates in the pre-selection. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- News from KEK, Japan Hideo Hirayama SARE3 (The Third Workshop on Simulating Accelerator Radiation Environments) was held at KEK during May 7-9, 1997. As with the previous workshops, the Third Workshop covered all aspects of simulation concerning accelerator-generated fields, including the calculations of various facilities, comparisons with experiments and benchmarking efforts. Recent code developments and the particle production models or cross section data were also presented and discussed as the bases of this workshop. The workshop, sponsored by High Energy Accelerator Research Organization in Japan (KEK), attracted nearly 80 computer experts and physicists from 8 countries and two international organizations. Many internationally known experts from a variety of fields participated in the workshop. The proceedings of SARE3 will be published as a KEK Proceedings. It will include most of the talks presented at SARE3 together with several papers by persons who were unable to attend the workshop due to various reasons. Following SARE3, SATIF3 (Third Specialists' Meeting on Shielding Aspects of Accelerators, Targets and Irradiation Facilities) was held at Tohoku University, Sendai during May 12-13, 1997. SATIF3 was organized by the OECD/NEA, the Shielding Working Group of Reactor Physics Committee of Japan, the Radiation Safety Information Computational Center and Tohoku University. Various presentations and discussions took place based on the actions cited at the previous meeting SATIF2 at CERN. Some progress was achieved but there still many problems remaining to be solved in this field. The proceedings of SATIF3 will be published by OECD/NEA. The next SARE/SATIF will be held in October 1998 (hosted by Oak Ridge National Laboratory). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- News from KSU Tracy N. Tipping THE MACDONALD LABORATORY AS A NATIONAL USER FACILITY The James R. Macdonald Laboratory (JRML) performs state-of-the-art research and provides leadership in the development of new and/or novel experimental and theoretical methods in atomic physics. In addition, JRML provides top training for young scientists for careers in research, teaching, and industry. The Macdonald Laboratory has been associated with the U.S. Department of Energy (and its forerunners) for almost thirty years. During this time, numerous outside users have conducted research in the JRML primarily as collaborators with JRML faculty. Over the past few years, the Macdonald Laboratory has been developing facilities to serve as a national user facility for atomic collision research using highly charged ion beams. Basic atomic physics research builds on the science and technology base that underpins the future of energy development by government and industry. The training of young scientists, which is listed as one of the goals of the Office of Energy Research, is ideally addressed at a university-based user facility such as at the Macdonald Laboratory. On 1 June 1997, the Macdonald Laboratory formally began operating as a U.S. Department of Energy National User Facility. This begins a new phase of operation at JRML where outside users, who may or may not be collaborators with JRML faculty, will be using the facility for atomic physics research. A call for proposals has gone out and the first cycle of beamtime as a user facility will begin on 1 October 1997. For more information, contact the Macdonald Laboratory at (913) 532-6782 or jrml@phys.ksu.edu. Information can also be obtained from our home page http://www.phys.ksu.edu/area/jrm/ . --------------------------------------------------------------------- News from LSU Lorraine Day The J. Bennett Johnston Sr. Center for Advanced Microstructures and Devices is pleased to announce that it has been named a National Center for Excellence in Microfabrication. Our micromachining sector is growing with over 2500 sq. ft of cleanroom space and associated processing equipment. We are also eagerly awaiting the delivery of a 7.5 Tesla superconducting wiggler from Novosibrisk. A variable line-spacing monochromator beamline and a 6 M toroidal grating monochromator beamline are under construction. Researchers are extremely excited about the normal incidence monochromator beamline which has been approved and is awaiting construction. We are finally building a small office building (9 offices and a conference room). Those who have visited may know that our offices are, for the most part, located on the Louisiana State University Campus some 6 miles from the synchrotron light source. All of these changes have meant a very busy time for health physicists We are happy to report that we have no skyshine problems from having removed shielding in the first long straight section (location of the wiggler), although we did see a significant increase in synchrotron radiation inside the ring. Looking forward to seeing my colleagues in San Antonio. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- News from TJNAF Robert May CW Beam to Three Halls at Jefferson Lab Jefferson Lab's CEBAF accelerator delivered simultaneous continuous wave (CW) electron beams to all three experimental halls for the first time on May 19. With the first Hall A experiment well underway, with five Hall C experiments and halves of two others completed, and with Hall B commissioning proceeding on schedule, prospects for further improvements in accelerator operations appear quite encouraging. In particular, the accelerator is scheduled to provide 5 GeV beam this fall -- 25% over the 4 GeV specification. Recent operational highlights include: * Five-pass beam current of 180 microamperes, with the full design value of 200 microamperes expected soon. * Demonstrated attainment of a dynamic range of 5 x 10^4 in beam current -- e.g., Hall B receiving 2 nanoamperes while Hall C receives 100 microamperes. * Continued development of polarized-beam capability. * Initial demonstration of operation at "nonstandard" energies from the 400 MeV linacs -- i.e., energies not equal to 400 MeV. Twelfth Jefferson Lab Program Advisory Committee Meeting Planned With five Hall C experiments and Phase 1 of a sixth complete, with a seventh Hall C experiment in progress, with the first Hall A experiment starting, and with Hall B commissioning about to begin, Jefferson Lab is planning a twelfth meeting of its Program Advisory Committee (PAC). Due by June 26 for the August 4-8 PAC12 to consider are: * New proposals, including those for experiments requiring beam energies up to 6 GeV. * Updates to approved, conditionally approved, and deferred experiments. * Letters-of-intent concerning possible future proposals. B. Filippone of Caltech will chair PAC12. Members include D. Geesaman of Argonne National Laboratory, B. Gittelman of Cornell, W. Haxton of U. Washington, J-M. Laget of Saclay, R. Lourie of Renaissance Technology, V. Pandharipande of U. Illinois, B. Schoch of U. Bonn, S. Vigdor of Indiana U., and G. Young of ORNL. The call for proposals and full related details are available at the Jefferson Lab Web site: http://www.JLab.org/general/visit/PACpage/PAC12/proposal.html or from the Jefferson Lab User Liaison Office (users@JLab.org, or 757 269-7586). ====================================================================== 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@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, especially if your mailer adds a signature. If you experience problems with subscribing/updating, please send me an e-mail to james@slac.stanford.edu and I will do it for you. ====================================================================== CLOSING THOUGHTS "The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn." --- Alvin Toffler "Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm." --- Winston Churchill