3 ms·

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!

by imdsm 3y ago

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.

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!

by 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.