NCRP Report 144: Radiation Protection for Particle Accelerator Facilities
Ralph H. Thomas and J. Donald Cossairt
If at first you don’t succeed
After about 15 years, the work of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP) Scientific Committee (SC) 46-8 is soon to see the light of day. As early as 1986, Charlie Meinhold and Ken Kase suggested that it was time to revise NCRP Report 51, "Radiation Protection Control Guidelines for 0.1-100 MeV Particle Accelerator Facilities," which appeared in 1977.
Scientific Committee 46-8 was appointed and began its serious work in 1990. A succession of drafts appeared through the following decade. Committee members were Bob Casey, Don Cossairt, Keran O’Brien, Norman Rohrig, Les Slaback, Geoffrey Stapleton, Bill Swanson, and Ralph Thomas. As the work matured, the committee was joined by David Perry (Rutherford Laboratory) as an adviser and Lutz Moritz (TRIUMF) and Vashek Vylet (Duke University) as consultants.
The purpose of Report 144 is to provide design guidelines for radiation protection; to identify those aspects of radiological safety that are of major, or even unique, importance to the operation of particle accelerator installations; and to suggest methods by which safe operation may be achieved. One important goal was to provide ready access to new material developed in the quarter century since NCRP 51 was published. Thus the present report of almost 500 pages is a substantial revision and expansion of the earlier report and includes new information on source intensities, shielding, dosimetry, and the environmental aspects of particle accelerator operation. It is primarily concerned with radiological safety aspects that are special to the operation of particle accelerators having energies above about 5 MeV up to the highest energies available, while not neglecting low-energy neutron generators.
Many events beyond the control of the report committee have conspired to endow this new report with the longest gestation period of any NCRP report. We have endured several stages of the evolution of electronic word processing, along with the challenging budgetary and regulatory circumstances of several laboratories. However, this task is very near completion and the document should be available from the NCRP early in 2004. This work would not be so close to seeing the light of day but for the strong support of NCRP and its staff. We are deeply indebted to Charlie Meinhold for his original idea; to Ken Kase for his quiet, steady support through the preparation of the text and also for his share in originating the project idea; to Tom Tenforde for his continuing support despite NCRP’s difficult budgetary climate; to Costa Maletskos for his steady editing; and to Cindy O’Brien for her competence, efficiency, and great good humor in bringing the document to a state of readiness for publication.
Try, try again.