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Description
The Beam Charge Monitoring Interlock System (BCMIS) is a new safety system developed by the Personnel Protection Systems (PPS) team for the Advanced Light Source Upgrade (ALS-U) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. BCMIS mitigates ionizing radiation hazards by limiting the severity of beam loss events. It continuously monitors beam charge across the transfer lines and automatically terminates operation if predefined thresholds are exceeded, ensuring that radiation levels outside the facility's shielding remain within safety limits and that personnel are protected.
This paper presents an overview of the BCMIS design, architecture, and components, and discusses the reliability challenges encountered in developing it as a PLC-based safety system. Key challenges include high-speed analog signal processing, dependency on external event triggers, and establishing an appropriate system architecture. Additional challenges include selecting and verifying components, planning for system verification and validation, and integrating BCMIS, a modern PLC-based system, into the existing operational relay-based ALS Personnel Protection System.