Aside from the gamble that any fundamental research represents, consider the immense amount of training CERN generates every year, with several thousand physici

Aside from the gamble that any fundamental research represents, consider the immense amount of training CERN generates every year, with several thousand physicists and engineers continuously involved. That sort of a mix generates more learning than the sum of its parts, because everyone has opportunities to learn from many related fields. If the money was instead split into many smaller projects it wouldn't generate the same kind of learning, because each project would be a tiny silo compared to CERN.