What is ActiWiz?

Operating an accelerator one always faces beam losses which result in the activation of adjacent material. On closer inspection it becomes evident that the radiological hazard exhibited by radioactive material has a clear logistical, operational as well as potentially significant financial impact on any further operation or process that is to be conducted involving activated constituents or infrastructure of an accelerator. In order to assess and compare the radiological hazards of arbitrary materials to be used at CERN’s accelerators a mathematical model and an associated computer code with a graphical interactive user interface - ActiWiz - has been developed which allows for fast and relatively simple analysis.

The software (download for users who are signed in!)

ActiWiz provides a graphical user interface to define arbitrary materials and yields an assessment of the radiological hazard taking operational RP as well as waste disposal considerations into account. It is based on isotope predictions obtained from FLUKA Monte Carlo calculations. The minimum required parameters to be selected by the user are:

•  the accelerator (LHC, SPS, PS, etc...) or LHC experiment (ALICE, ATLAS, CMS, LHCb)
•  a prototype location (close to the beam line, next to tunnel wall, etc...)

If more detailed information like the equipment lifetime is available it can be taken into account as well to obtain comparisons for various materials.

ActiWiz, in its present state, has been tailored to CERN specific applications and MUST NOT be used at other facilities, unless explicit authorization has been granted.

Interested parties that are not affiliated with CERN, please contact mail-TTO [at] cern.ch  for more information.

The software can be downloaded from here after signing in.

Reference: 

H. Vincke and C. Theis, “ActiWiz 3 – an overview of the latest developments and their application”, IOP Conf. Series: Journal of Physics: Conf. Series 1046 (2018) 012007,
doi :10.1088/1742-6596/1046/1/012007.
 

In order to provide guidelines for the selection of material a collection of the most commonly used materials at CERN has been compiled and processed with ActiWiz by a working group to assess the respective radiological hazard (see here).

 

In case of questions/problems please contact the authors of the software: Christian Theis or Helmut Vincke

 

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