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CERN, and other Major Scientific Facilities to Cut Back Due to a Lack of Energy.
From the Nature Briefing news feed:
Energy crisis squeezes science at CERN and other major facilities
Subtitle:
LHC to end 2022 data-taking season two weeks early to save on electricity, among other measures.
Excerpts:
As energy prices spike as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, possibly causing a global economic downturn and stoking fears of rolling blackouts — especially in Europe — science laboratories are not being spared. The situation has raised particular alarm at CERN, Europe’s particle-physics lab outside Geneva, Switzerland, which already has massive energy bills in normal years.
On 26 September, CERN’s governing council agreed to significantly reduce the facility’s energy consumption in 2022 and 2023, after Électricité de France (EDF), a French electricity supplier, asked the lab to decrease the load on its network. The council decided to bring forward the lab’s annual year-end technical stop by two weeks, to 28 November, and to reduce operations by 20% in 2023 — which will be accomplished mostly by shutting down four weeks early next year, in mid-November. Operations will resume as planned at the end of February, in both 2023 and 2024.
CERN has also developed plans with EDF for reduced power configurations, in case energy use needs to be limited further in the coming months. Smaller measures are being taken to reduce overall energy use on the CERN campus, including switching off street lighting at night and delaying the start of building heating by one week.
Keeping cool
CERN’s flagship machine, the 27-kilometre-long Large Hadron Collider, is a major electricity glutton, in large part because of its 27-megawatt liquid-helium cryogenic system, the largest of its kind in the world. During normal operations, the annual electricity consumption of CERN is about 1.3 terawatt hours (for comparison, nearby Geneva uses around 3 terawatt hours per year). Yearly maintenance periods for the LHC are scheduled during the winter months, to save on its bills. Consumption falls to about 0.5 terawatt hours during longer shutdowns, as happened in 2020–22. After extensive upgrades, the LHC restarted in April, and the total electricity cost is expected to be about 88.5 million Swiss Francs (US$89 million), says Joachim Mnich, director for research and computing at CERN. The reduction in operations will lower that significantly next year, although not by the full 20%, because the accelerator magnets still need to be kept cool while the facility is offline.
The move will help to save money amid rising energy prices, but Mnich says cost was not the main driver of the decision. Natural gas is the primary source of electricity and heating in the winter in much of Europe, and the CERN council wants to reduce their use of the limited supplies, leaving more for people to heat their homes. “This is something we do not primarily to save money, but as a sign of social responsibility,” he says.
The longer shutdowns will affect the scientists who rely on CERN’s other accelerators for their experiments. Those that were scheduled for the last two weeks of this year’s run will have to be postponed until next year, and the competition for the reduced beam time next year will be fiercer than usual, says Mnich...
On 26 September, CERN’s governing council agreed to significantly reduce the facility’s energy consumption in 2022 and 2023, after Électricité de France (EDF), a French electricity supplier, asked the lab to decrease the load on its network. The council decided to bring forward the lab’s annual year-end technical stop by two weeks, to 28 November, and to reduce operations by 20% in 2023 — which will be accomplished mostly by shutting down four weeks early next year, in mid-November. Operations will resume as planned at the end of February, in both 2023 and 2024.
CERN has also developed plans with EDF for reduced power configurations, in case energy use needs to be limited further in the coming months. Smaller measures are being taken to reduce overall energy use on the CERN campus, including switching off street lighting at night and delaying the start of building heating by one week.
Keeping cool
CERN’s flagship machine, the 27-kilometre-long Large Hadron Collider, is a major electricity glutton, in large part because of its 27-megawatt liquid-helium cryogenic system, the largest of its kind in the world. During normal operations, the annual electricity consumption of CERN is about 1.3 terawatt hours (for comparison, nearby Geneva uses around 3 terawatt hours per year). Yearly maintenance periods for the LHC are scheduled during the winter months, to save on its bills. Consumption falls to about 0.5 terawatt hours during longer shutdowns, as happened in 2020–22. After extensive upgrades, the LHC restarted in April, and the total electricity cost is expected to be about 88.5 million Swiss Francs (US$89 million), says Joachim Mnich, director for research and computing at CERN. The reduction in operations will lower that significantly next year, although not by the full 20%, because the accelerator magnets still need to be kept cool while the facility is offline.
The move will help to save money amid rising energy prices, but Mnich says cost was not the main driver of the decision. Natural gas is the primary source of electricity and heating in the winter in much of Europe, and the CERN council wants to reduce their use of the limited supplies, leaving more for people to heat their homes. “This is something we do not primarily to save money, but as a sign of social responsibility,” he says.
The longer shutdowns will affect the scientists who rely on CERN’s other accelerators for their experiments. Those that were scheduled for the last two weeks of this year’s run will have to be postponed until next year, and the competition for the reduced beam time next year will be fiercer than usual, says Mnich...
This is, of course, a function of the Europeans drinking the reactionary impulse to return to depending for its energy supplies wind and solar, a practice abandoned beginning in the early 19th century for a reason, coupled with insipid rhetoric in Europe to vilify the technology that was the greatest practical result of nuclear physics, nuclear power.
The wind and solar industry were always, are, and always will be lipstick on the dangerous fossil fuel pig. At least France intends to straighten out its flirtation with this grotesque and highly destructive flirtation with anti-nukism.