Protection Against Accidental Beam Losses at the LHC

Protection of the LHC against uncontrolled beam losses is of prime importance due to the very high stored beam energy. For nominal beam intensities, each of the two 7 TeV/c proton beams has a stored energy of 360 MJ threatening to damage accelerator equipment. At injection a number of passive beam absorbers must be correctly positioned and specific procedures have been proposed to ensure safe injection of high intensity. The LHC beam dump block being the only LHC element that can safety absorb the full LHC beam, it is essential that the beams are extracted unto the dump block in case of emergency. The failure time constants extend from 100 microseconds to few seconds depending on the equipment. Failures must be detected at a sufficiently early stage and transmitted to the beam interlock system that triggers the beam dumping system. To ensure safe operation the machine protection system uses a variety of systems to detect such failures. The strategy for protection of the LHC will be illustrated, with emphasis on new developments and studies that aim at an increased redundancy of the protection system.