Risk Assessment of the Chopper Dipole Kicker Magnets for the MedAustron Facility

The MedAustron facility, to be built in Wiener Neustadt (Austria), will provide protons and ions for both cancer therapy and research [1]. Different types of kicker magnets will be used in the accelerator complex, including fast beam chopper dipoles: these allow the beam to be switched on and off for routine operational reasons or in case of emergency. Main requirements for the beam chopper system are safety and reliability. A criticality analysis, to chart the probability of failure modes against the severity of their consequences of the fault, has been carried out for the chopper dipole system. This "Failure Mode, Effects, and Criticality Analysis" (FMECA), has been used to highlight failure modes with relatively high probability and severity of consequences: conservative ratings of critical components and appropriate redundancy, together with measurements and interlocks, have been used to reduce the probability and criticality of faults. This paper gives an overview of the Risk Assessment approach and presents results of the FMECA.