Calculation of water activation for the LHC

The management of activated water in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN is a key concern for radiation protection. For this reason, the induced radioactivity of the different water circuits is calculated using the Monte-Carlo (MC) code FLUKA. The results lead to the definition of procedures to be taken into account during the repair and maintenance of the machine, as well as to measures being necessary for a release of water into the environment. In order to assess the validity of the applied methods, a benchmark experiment was carried out at the CERN-EU High Energy Reference Field (CERF) facility, where a hadron beam (120 GeV) is impinging on a copper target. Four samples of water, as used at the LHC, and different in their chemical compositions, were irradiated near the copper target. In addition to the tritium activity measured with a liquid scintillation counter, the samples were also analyzed using gamma spectroscopy in order to determine the activity of the gamma emitting isotopes such as Be 7 and Na 24 . While for the latter an excellent agreement between simulation and measurement was found, for the calculation of tritium a correction factor is derived to be applied for future LHC calculations in which the activity is calculated by direct scoring of produced nuclei. A simplified geometry representing the LHC Arc sections is then used to evaluate the different calculation methods with FLUKA. By comparing these methods and by taking into account the benchmark results, a strategy for the environmental calculations can be defined.