(ORDO NEWS) — In 2023, the world‘s most powerful colliding beam accelerator, located near Geneva, will be reduced by 20 percent.
The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), the world’s premier particle physics research center, has shut down the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s most powerful colliding particle accelerator for accelerating and colliding protons and heavy ions, for two weeks ahead of time, until about spring.
The reason is the need to save energy in times of crisis and rising prices.
The decision was announced at the end of September, today it came into force. In 2023, the work of the LHC will be reduced by 20 percent.
In addition to the collider, other CERN sites will also be affected by energy saving measures: for example, street lighting will be turned off at night, heating in buildings will appear a week later than usual, and it will also be “optimized” throughout the winter.
The organization is also exploring the possibility of using renewable energy sources, including solar panels.
“Long before today’s energy crisis CERN was actively working to reduce electricity consumption. Energy efficiency measures implemented over the past decade have resulted in a ten percent reduction in the laboratory’s energy consumption.
These range from optimizing cooling systems in the data center to refurbishing transmission lines to make more efficient use of equipment and reduce losses,” the press release reads.
The Large Hadron Collider is located on the border between France and Switzerland, near Geneva, in a tunnel 100 meters deep.
It consists of a 27-kilometer accelerating ring of superconducting magnets and a variety of installations, each of which performs its own function.
Superconducting magnets and resonators are cooled by liquid helium to 1.8 kelvin (minus 271 degrees Celsius) and 4.5 kelvin (minus 268 degrees Celsius), respectively.
The collider consumes three times less electricity than all of Geneva (and CERN almost as much), and is powered by the French state-owned power generating company Electricite de France, the operator of nuclear power plants. EDF operates 59 nuclear power plants and supplies electricity to 25 million homes.
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