5 ms·

Do we know if this could have an impact on the local population? Also is there any research on the effect of the LHC on people living in Geneva and around?

by sakex 3y ago

jjgreen 3y ago
I think they'll be OK: https://www.hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/ https://www.hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.co...
fabian2k 3y ago
> During such a quench, the liquid helium in the magnet warms up and turns into a gas that is recovered by the cryogenic system to be re-liquified, ready to cool down the magnets again. They're capturing the helium, so it isn't released usually. Not sure what they do with the nitrogen, I'd guess that is released as it is much cheaper. But in any case the amounts involved in such a quench are only a danger in the immediate vicinity, not outside. So if you're in the same room as a quenching magnet and the room isn't sufficiently sized or ventilated, there could be danger. But that's about the limit to it.
- Ekaros 3y ago
  Took a tour in local university physics lab dealing with helium. My takeaway is that liquid nitrogen is essentially free. And used to protect or keep helium parts colder. So anyway in process you have so much of it that simply having it boil away or be discarded is not big deal.
  - gus_massa 3y ago
    A few years ago, while doing a physics lab for students in the university, we needed ice and liquid nitrogen. It was weird that is was easier to get some liquid nitrogen[1] than ice cubes[2]. IIRC we asked for the official price of liquid nitrogen, and it was similar to the price of soft drink like coke. [1] Because it was used regularly in a few of the research labs. Just get a dewar flask that is not made of glass, and ask nicely. [2] No refrigerator in the lab, the cafeteria didn't have any, most refrigerators had no ice cubes or a huge ice block where there use to be the ice cubes shelf.
  - SoftTalker 3y ago
    It's comparatively free; the air is nearly 80% nitrogen. The equipment to produce liquid nitrogen has a cost and uses a fair amount of electricity. Labs that use a lot of liquid nitrogen may produce their own, but often it's produced industrially in large quantities and trucked to customer sites. It has a lot of uses, from dermatology to machine shops.
meindnoch 3y ago
Severe mutations and deformities.
- DoctorOetker 3y ago
  Brain damage for the schedule programmer.
SiempreViernes 3y ago
Uh, I guess some of the locals will get second-hand bummed-outedness from their acquaintances at CERN? Did you even click on the link dude? The picture showing frost on the outside of a metal tube in a sealed tunnel ~100 m under ground is the total extent of the exterior effects...
harperlee 3y ago
It is a small leak of helium that disables a refrigeration unit.
cominous 3y ago
Read the article. It was a >local< event at one of the magnets which caused the whole magnet to freeze over. The "consequences" are, that the whole accelerator needs to halt operations to repair the element. That takes quite a while and will postpone the schedule..
- sakex 3y ago
  Sure but is it impossible that something would leak when injecting massive amounts of energy in a gigantic tunnel?
  - constantcrying 3y ago
    But what would leak? The helium? The nitrogen? The only real danger is if you are in an enclosed space and oxygen is displaced. Nitrogen gas is about the least toxic substance imaginable and helium will literally just go away unless you make absolutely sure to trap it.
    - __alexs 3y ago
      > Nitrogen gas is about the least toxic substance imaginable Interestingly basically all gasses appear to be bad for you in some way. Perhaps the vacuum of space truly is where we belong? /s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_narcosis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_narcosis I can't find the study right now but I think this affect is even measurable at atmospheric pressure in that if you give replace the Nitrogen with other noble gasses you can observe improvements in cognitive function.
      - constantcrying 3y ago
        100% of substances are bad for you under some circumstances. You have breathed in millions of liters of nitrogen. It is as safe as any substance could possibly be.
  - flangola7 3y ago
    Besides helium, what substances are you worried about leaking?
imdsm 3y ago
Do we know if... the magnet heating up, and the helium leaking into the vacuum chamber... could have an impact on the local population? I think they'll be ok!
- contravariant 3y ago
  I mean worst that could happen is that it's harmful to someone standing right next to it if it fails catastrophically (no clue if that's even a realistic concern in this case). But since this happens over 50 meters below ground I'm not too worried. Not that it was put that far below ground for safety reasons, it was mostly to save on the amount of land required and to shield the detectors from pesky background radiation (not the other way around).
  - cesarb 3y ago
    > I mean worst that could happen is that it's harmful to someone standing right next to it if it fails catastrophically (no clue if that's even a realistic concern in this case). AFAIK, these areas are restricted while the LHC is operating, so there would be nobody near it (and I believe trying to enter these areas triggers an interlock which stops the whole system before you can get near it).
    - salawat 3y ago
      If the beam shaping catastrophically fails due to the magnet failing completely, as I understand it, you can get a beam excursion from the beam track that results in a hell of a lot of irradiated earth as the beam does what beams do to everything in its way. IIRC from my short time intersecting with the finer points of collider discussion, they locate them in such areas where generally if such things happen, it's a non-issue; but take great pains to ensure that such events don't happen, as it would require potential excavation and removal of a lot of hardware to replace the irradiated sections to restore a contamination free loop. It's also, if I recall correctly, part of why circular paths were chosen instead of things like ovals or capsules for the path shape among other factors I think like optimization for cheapest construction. Any loss of beam containment would continue on a tangent ensuring one and only one segment of the collider would potentially have to be replaced; other shapes would end up with magnets that were relatively more catastrophic to have fail due to the excursion geometry having more opportunities to escape along a path near parallel to the track, allowing the irradiation of additional accelerator segments. Which would be a hell of a lot more expensive to remediate. I sometimes laugh, because in the business world, people like to talk about what is 'reasonably forseeable'. I'm a bit of a stick in the mud at such times because I can generally say that exactly no one in the room is actually interested in ptobing the actual boundaries of the reasonably forseeable, as that would require doing too much math. I'm regularly right in that regard.
gostsamo 3y ago
Noble gases are not chemically active, but some interdementional rifts might allow access of alternative life forms to our reality.
- rob74 3y ago
  I think you're mixing things up - the incident you are referring to happened at the Black Mesa Research Facility, not at the LHC...
  - gostsamo 3y ago
    The LHC was a cover. Do you really think that governments honestly will spend billions for fundamental science without a back motive? It is the ideal environment to hide a secret base where they can divert money, energy, and people to.
Aardwolf 3y ago
Unbelievable the LHC is already running for 15 years! When it was just finished it was still the heyday of funny flash animations on the internet, some of course joking about the LHC ending the world: https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/469806 https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/469806
- sakex 3y ago
  Yes I think it's great, but still it would be good to have research to understand the effect on local population. It is intellectually dishonest to just say it is not possible for anything to leak and have adverse effects on people without actively researching the matter.
  - contravariant 3y ago
    You should really do some more extensive research about the possible harmful effects of your comments more carefully before posting. This one is giving me a headache.
  - bradrn 3y ago
    The was a small leak of helium within the instrument. Such incidents are completely unexceptional with superconducting magnets, and pose no risk to anyone outside the room where it happen, since both helium and nitrogen are about as inert as gases can get. I suspect it wouldn’t even have made the news if it hadn’t delayed the experiments.
  - fabian2k 3y ago
    We know what helium and nitrogen gas do and what dangers they represent. We also know how much of them are in the LHC. The main danger is that both displace oxygen, so you can suffocate e.g. if a large amount of helium is released by a quench in a small room. But this isn't any danger to the surrounding area, there just isn't enough liquid helium or nitrogen in there. Both gases are inert, so they really don't do anything else. There isn't anything to investigate here.
  - db48x 3y ago
    It’s just helium. Have you ever bought a helium balloon, the kind that float? This is the same stuff that’s in the balloon. It’s also used as a mixture gas by deep–sea divers. It's chemically completely inert; breathing it in doesn’t have any particular effect on the body. It’s harmless, unless you fill an entire room with it so that all the oxygen is displaced. Are people really so scientifically illiterate that they immediately assume that if anything goes wrong with a complicated machine that it will be harmful to their health?
pif 3y ago
What do you propose exactly? What should we monitor? By the way, I worked at CERN for a few years up to the first months of operations of LHC. Furthermore, I've been living in the region since then; for several years, my home was exactly over the LHC tunnel. I've never got a nightmare from that!
SoftTalker 3y ago
Not sure, but the engineers all came running out of the room talking like Mickey Mouse.

Do we know if this could have an impact on the local population? Also is there any research on the effect of the LHC on people living in Geneva and around?

by sakex 3y ago

Do we know if this could have an impact on the local population? Also is there any research on the effect of the LHC on people living in Geneva and around?

jjgreen 3y ago

I think they'll be OK: https://www.hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/ https://www.hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.co...

fabian2k 3y ago

> During such a quench, the liquid helium in the magnet warms up and turns into a gas that is recovered by the cryogenic system to be re-liquified, ready to cool down the magnets again. They're capturing the helium, so it isn't released usually. Not sure what they do with the nitrogen, I'd guess that is released as it is much cheaper. But in any case the amounts involved in such a quench are only a danger in the immediate vicinity, not outside. So if you're in the same room as a quenching magnet and the room isn't sufficiently sized or ventilated, there could be danger. But that's about the limit to it.

Ekaros 3y ago
Took a tour in local university physics lab dealing with helium. My takeaway is that liquid nitrogen is essentially free. And used to protect or keep helium parts colder. So anyway in process you have so much of it that simply having it boil away or be discarded is not big deal.
- gus_massa 3y ago
  A few years ago, while doing a physics lab for students in the university, we needed ice and liquid nitrogen. It was weird that is was easier to get some liquid nitrogen[1] than ice cubes[2]. IIRC we asked for the official price of liquid nitrogen, and it was similar to the price of soft drink like coke. [1] Because it was used regularly in a few of the research labs. Just get a dewar flask that is not made of glass, and ask nicely. [2] No refrigerator in the lab, the cafeteria didn't have any, most refrigerators had no ice cubes or a huge ice block where there use to be the ice cubes shelf.
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  It's comparatively free; the air is nearly 80% nitrogen. The equipment to produce liquid nitrogen has a cost and uses a fair amount of electricity. Labs that use a lot of liquid nitrogen may produce their own, but often it's produced industrially in large quantities and trucked to customer sites. It has a lot of uses, from dermatology to machine shops.

meindnoch 3y ago

Severe mutations and deformities.

DoctorOetker 3y ago
Brain damage for the schedule programmer.

SiempreViernes 3y ago

Uh, I guess some of the locals will get second-hand bummed-outedness from their acquaintances at CERN? Did you even click on the link dude? The picture showing frost on the outside of a metal tube in a sealed tunnel ~100 m under ground is the total extent of the exterior effects...

harperlee 3y ago

It is a small leak of helium that disables a refrigeration unit.

cominous 3y ago

Read the article. It was a >local< event at one of the magnets which caused the whole magnet to freeze over. The "consequences" are, that the whole accelerator needs to halt operations to repair the element. That takes quite a while and will postpone the schedule..

sakex 3y ago
Sure but is it impossible that something would leak when injecting massive amounts of energy in a gigantic tunnel?
- constantcrying 3y ago
  But what would leak? The helium? The nitrogen? The only real danger is if you are in an enclosed space and oxygen is displaced. Nitrogen gas is about the least toxic substance imaginable and helium will literally just go away unless you make absolutely sure to trap it.
  - __alexs 3y ago
    > Nitrogen gas is about the least toxic substance imaginable Interestingly basically all gasses appear to be bad for you in some way. Perhaps the vacuum of space truly is where we belong? /s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_narcosis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_narcosis I can't find the study right now but I think this affect is even measurable at atmospheric pressure in that if you give replace the Nitrogen with other noble gasses you can observe improvements in cognitive function.
    - constantcrying 3y ago
      100% of substances are bad for you under some circumstances. You have breathed in millions of liters of nitrogen. It is as safe as any substance could possibly be.
- flangola7 3y ago
  Besides helium, what substances are you worried about leaking?

imdsm 3y ago

Do we know if... the magnet heating up, and the helium leaking into the vacuum chamber... could have an impact on the local population? I think they'll be ok!

contravariant 3y ago
I mean worst that could happen is that it's harmful to someone standing right next to it if it fails catastrophically (no clue if that's even a realistic concern in this case). But since this happens over 50 meters below ground I'm not too worried. Not that it was put that far below ground for safety reasons, it was mostly to save on the amount of land required and to shield the detectors from pesky background radiation (not the other way around).
- cesarb 3y ago
  > I mean worst that could happen is that it's harmful to someone standing right next to it if it fails catastrophically (no clue if that's even a realistic concern in this case). AFAIK, these areas are restricted while the LHC is operating, so there would be nobody near it (and I believe trying to enter these areas triggers an interlock which stops the whole system before you can get near it).
  - salawat 3y ago
    If the beam shaping catastrophically fails due to the magnet failing completely, as I understand it, you can get a beam excursion from the beam track that results in a hell of a lot of irradiated earth as the beam does what beams do to everything in its way. IIRC from my short time intersecting with the finer points of collider discussion, they locate them in such areas where generally if such things happen, it's a non-issue; but take great pains to ensure that such events don't happen, as it would require potential excavation and removal of a lot of hardware to replace the irradiated sections to restore a contamination free loop. It's also, if I recall correctly, part of why circular paths were chosen instead of things like ovals or capsules for the path shape among other factors I think like optimization for cheapest construction. Any loss of beam containment would continue on a tangent ensuring one and only one segment of the collider would potentially have to be replaced; other shapes would end up with magnets that were relatively more catastrophic to have fail due to the excursion geometry having more opportunities to escape along a path near parallel to the track, allowing the irradiation of additional accelerator segments. Which would be a hell of a lot more expensive to remediate. I sometimes laugh, because in the business world, people like to talk about what is 'reasonably forseeable'. I'm a bit of a stick in the mud at such times because I can generally say that exactly no one in the room is actually interested in ptobing the actual boundaries of the reasonably forseeable, as that would require doing too much math. I'm regularly right in that regard.

gostsamo 3y ago

Noble gases are not chemically active, but some interdementional rifts might allow access of alternative life forms to our reality.

rob74 3y ago
I think you're mixing things up - the incident you are referring to happened at the Black Mesa Research Facility, not at the LHC...
- gostsamo 3y ago
  The LHC was a cover. Do you really think that governments honestly will spend billions for fundamental science without a back motive? It is the ideal environment to hide a secret base where they can divert money, energy, and people to.

Aardwolf 3y ago

Unbelievable the LHC is already running for 15 years! When it was just finished it was still the heyday of funny flash animations on the internet, some of course joking about the LHC ending the world: https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/469806 https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/469806

sakex 3y ago
Yes I think it's great, but still it would be good to have research to understand the effect on local population. It is intellectually dishonest to just say it is not possible for anything to leak and have adverse effects on people without actively researching the matter.
- contravariant 3y ago
  You should really do some more extensive research about the possible harmful effects of your comments more carefully before posting. This one is giving me a headache.
- bradrn 3y ago
  The was a small leak of helium within the instrument. Such incidents are completely unexceptional with superconducting magnets, and pose no risk to anyone outside the room where it happen, since both helium and nitrogen are about as inert as gases can get. I suspect it wouldn’t even have made the news if it hadn’t delayed the experiments.
- fabian2k 3y ago
  We know what helium and nitrogen gas do and what dangers they represent. We also know how much of them are in the LHC. The main danger is that both displace oxygen, so you can suffocate e.g. if a large amount of helium is released by a quench in a small room. But this isn't any danger to the surrounding area, there just isn't enough liquid helium or nitrogen in there. Both gases are inert, so they really don't do anything else. There isn't anything to investigate here.
- db48x 3y ago
  It’s just helium. Have you ever bought a helium balloon, the kind that float? This is the same stuff that’s in the balloon. It’s also used as a mixture gas by deep–sea divers. It's chemically completely inert; breathing it in doesn’t have any particular effect on the body. It’s harmless, unless you fill an entire room with it so that all the oxygen is displaced. Are people really so scientifically illiterate that they immediately assume that if anything goes wrong with a complicated machine that it will be harmful to their health?

pif 3y ago

What do you propose exactly? What should we monitor? By the way, I worked at CERN for a few years up to the first months of operations of LHC. Furthermore, I've been living in the region since then; for several years, my home was exactly over the LHC tunnel. I've never got a nightmare from that!

SoftTalker 3y ago

Not sure, but the engineers all came running out of the room talking like Mickey Mouse.