Speaker
Description
Several Personnel Safety Systems (PSS) are being developed and commissioned as part of the ongoing construction and commissioning of the European Spallation Source (ESS), the world’s most powerful proton accelerator-based neutron source. The ESS PSS consists of safety interlock systems contributing to the mitigation of hazards to personnel such as prompt ionizing radiation, vacuum, and high voltage hazards.
As neutron production is planned for only 225 days per year, with neutron production and instruments expected to operate 24/7 during operation periods, facility availability and recovery time are important operational constraints. Therefore, the PSS must ensure personnel safety without unnecessarily affecting accelerator and instrument operation during interlock events and subsequent recovery.
This poster presents practical engineering approaches used during ESS PSS integration, where operational and availability requirements were considered alongside functional-safety requirements. The poster illustrates how these requirements were collected through integration meetings and reviews of PSS Concepts of Operation by system owners. Practical implementation examples from ESS are presented, including search-zone segmentation and recovery design, operational interfaces with facility systems such as vacuum and RF systems, safety function definitions adapted to specific operational and maintenance scenarios, and architecture decisions made to avoid unnecessary interruption of accelerator and instrument operations.