Concept of a Fire and Gas Safety System for Accelerators

Today CERN's facilities are equipped with automatic smoke and gas detection systems. Upon smoke or gas leak detection, local safety actions are automatically performed and alarms indicating the location and type of danger are transmitted to the CERN Fire Brigade. The firefighters then size their intervention based on the information received. The increasing complexity, size and quantity of CERN installations drives safety systems to evolve in the direction of simplicity. Intuitive interfaces are required to cope with high turnover of firefighters, and the inherent multinational environment. Global overview of alarms and safety actions statuses are needed by firefighters to decide on the best strategy for intervention. In some emergency situations, it might be necessary to manually trigger remote actions. CERN is studying a new concept, inspired by French standards, where the detection and protection layers are separated and act independently, but provide a common interface. This paper presents an application of this concept for the SPS* accelerator. Detection, fire-compartment and evacuation zones are presented, as well as the architecture of the detection and protection layers.