What could stop us and when

The LHC magnet system, as any other electrical machine, could suffer from electromechanical faults that may reduce operability, decrease performance, or, in the worst case, require an intervention and time-consuming exchange of components. Radiation-induced degradation of the mechanical properties of the insulating materials will increase the fault rate. In this report we consider the origins of faults, and attempt a quantitative estimate of the lifetime of the most critical components, the triplet and the resistive magnets around the collimator region.