Operational radiation protection challenges for the LHC experiments

Abstract Radiation protection physicists at CERN are often required to assess residual activation for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiments during stop periods in order to ensure adequate optimization during planned exposure situations and to establish proper procedures for the radiological control of materials. Given the complexity of the facilities and of the high-energy and mixed fields inducing the activation, Monte Carlo transport codes are an essential tool to simulate both prompt and residual radiation. The present work highlights the challenges of assessing residual dose rates for the LHC experiments in shutdown configurations and of establishing residual activation zonings. For the latter, a method based on fluence conversion coefficients was developed and is efficiently employed. The practical example of the assessment of the activation of the 600 tons of austenitic stainless steel in the future Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) High Granularity Calorimeter will be used to demonstrate how these challenges are dealt with and the capabilities of the method developed.