Beam loss monitor system for the SSC

At full intensity the energy contained in each beam of the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) is 400 MJ. The loss of a small fraction of that beam has the potential to cause magnet quenches or even severe damage to Collider components. To help protect the machine a sensitive and reliable beam loss monitor (BLM) system must be designed and built. In fact, BLM systems will be needed for all the accelerators of the SSC. The BLM system requirements for each of these accelerators will be discussed, but emphasis will be placed on the Collider. The discussion will include the preliminary design of BLM systems, the considerations that led to these designs, the calculations that were performed in development of the designs, and the problems that remain to be solved. A major tool in the design process has been a series of Monte Carlo calculations that were used to estimate beam loss distributions for the Collider arcs, the interaction regions, and the west utility region. These calculations were also used to study the fluence as a function of energy, the particle content, and the dose rate at selected positions. Detailed considerations such as detector spacing and sensitivity, loss fluctuations, reliability, and maintainability will be discussed. The proposed preliminary BLM system design for the Collider uses a radiation-hard, solid-state ionization detector and fast analog-to-digital conversion. Details of this design and relevant options will be discussed