The most severe hazard which can occur is a fire in the hall or inside the detector. Given a fire near the detector the most serious question has been whether depleted uranium plates of the calorimeter will start to burn and whether uranium oxide can get into the atmosphere. This question has been tackled in several ways under the leadership of H. F. Hoffmann.
A computer study has been performed by the Gesellschaft für Reaktorsicherheit (GRS) at Köln to investigate the propagation of a fire at ZEUS [20.6.1]. The cases of a fire starting outside of the detector and inside the detector have been investigated separately.