Residual radioactivity at the CERN 600Â MeV synchro-cyclotron

The 600 MeV synchro-cyclotron (SC) was the first accelerator that came into operation at CERN in 1957. It provided beams for CERN's first particle and nuclear physics experiments and operated for 33 years until it was shut down in 1990. In view of a planned partial decommissioning of the facility, a range of measurements were carried out to evaluate the levels of residual radioactivity in the accelerator and its surrounding after about 20 years of cooling time. Gamma spectrometry measurements were performed on 113 samples collected inside the three floors of the accelerator vault, on the cyclotron itself and on concrete samples taken from various parts of the building walls, up to a depth of 50 cm in the shield. About 40% of all samples contain traces of neutron-induced radionuclides, mainly 60Co (in metals), 133Ba, 137Cs, 152Eu and 154Eu (in concrete). Values of specific activities range from 5 mBq/g to 781 Bq/g. The maximum activity induced in concrete was observed at the depth of 40 cm in the wall near the cyclotron extraction channel. The laboratory measurements were supplemented by in-situ gamma spectrometry performed with the ISOCS system. A complete dose rate survey was also performed yielding isodose maps of the three levels of the building. The isotope production and the residual radioactivity in the barite walls of the SC bunker were simulated with the FLUKA and JEREMY codes in use at CERN for predicting residual radioactivity in activated accelerator components, and the results compared with the gamma spectrometry data. A detailed comparison of calculated and measured specific activities shows generally good agreement, to within a factor 2 in most cases. These results serve as indirect validation of the capabilities of these codes to correctly predict residual radioactivity with only a very approximate knowledge of the irradiation profile and after a very long (20 years) cooling time. Overall the results provided in this paper may be of use for estimating residual radioactivity in proton accelerators of comparable energy and for benchmarking computer codes.