Lhc, problems arrisen 0_0 ,, what exactly happened???????

[buddyzen]

i heard that the LHC is leaking hydrogen, what went wrong?? how long do you think it will take to fix? when will the next test be up again???

[Tormod]

They say weeks, possibly months.

 

I guess a tank must have blown.

[alexander]

the only place it can leak hydrogen is at the injection point in the linear accelerator, i dont think there is anywhere else that they use hydrogen, do they? in this case, they can continue working on testing certain aspects of the accelerator, until the tanks get fixed and the in-work testing can continue. Hydrogen tank rupture is a serious problem....

[freeztar]

Geneva, 20 September 2008. During commissioning (without beam) of the final LHC sector (sector 34) at high current for operation at 5 TeV, an incident occurred at mid-day on Friday 19 September resulting in a large helium leak into the tunnel. Preliminary investigations indicate that the most likely cause of the problem was a faulty electrical connection between two magnets, which probably melted at high current leading to mechanical failure. CERN ’s strict safety regulations ensured that at no time was there any risk to people.

 

A full investigation is underway, but it is already clear that the sector will have to be warmed up for repairs to take place. This implies a minimum of two months down time for LHC operation. For the same fault, not uncommon in a normally conducting machine, the repair time would be a matter of days.

 

Further details will be made available as soon as they are known.

CERN Press Release

 

A news article I read earlier today was saying that the LHC was scheduled to be shut down in November to conserve power in the winter months. They are currently considering whether to stand by that or not because of this current delay.

 

More here:

http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080922/full/455436a.html

[Tormod]

Yeah. Helium, not hydrogen. Still not good.

[alexander]

helium is used extensively in the project, to cool superconducting magnets, that makes more sense now, i mean where but at the injection site, would they have hydrogen, that perplexed me. But helium, that is a big deal, there is so much of it, and there is so much of it needed, and its so frigging cold (they use liquid to cool the magnets to 4-5K), that even a small leak would probably be pretty darn disastrous...

 

And yeah, the collider, though being very efficient, would still consume so much power, that they may have to shut cern down for a bit, to then have the excuse to use it. I mean i remember the first large coliders in Russia, near one of the big dams with a 6kW output hydroelectric plant... The power was powering the city of Krasnoyarsk, but when they used to power the colider, all the power was diverted from the city to the research center...