Kamran Vaziri and Don Cossairt
The scheduled shutdown of the Fermi National Accelerator Lab's (Fermilab's) accelerator complex is over and the collective dose added up to 11.2 person-rems. In preparation for this shutdown, the Accelerator Division (AD) head highlighted the importance of keeping doses as low as reasonably achievable (ALARA) at all meetings and briefings related to shutdown work. In preparation, AD staff proposed 539 tasks that were reviewed individually by the AD Radiation Safety Officer and his team. Working in collaboration with job-planners, each task was evaluated step-by-step to estimate the dose of radiation that would be received. The dose estimates were used to identify the precautions that needed to be taken. As the tasks unfolded, the work practices and dose estimates were further refined.
Over 440 radiation workers, most from AD but including those from other organizations temporarily assigned to shutdown projects, were involved in performing these tasks.
The startup ("awakening the beast") began in the middle of October--right on schedule--and all of the experiments have started running. Start-up requires the Operations Department and all of the machine systems departments to step up and work around the clock to get more than 100,000 devices working in harmony!