More Faults Found in LHC, But No Further Delay to Start-up

by Ian O'Neill on February 2, 2009

The LHC repairs are progressing well (CERN)

The LHC repairs are progressing well (CERN)

In September 2008, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) suffered a catastrophic quench, triggered by a faulty connection in the electronics connecting two of the supercooled magnets between Sections 3 and 4 of the 27 km-circumference particle accelerator. The “S34-incident” caused tonnes of helium coolant to explosively leak into the LHC tunnel, ripping the heavy electromagnets from their concrete mounts.

Naturally, this was a huge blow for CERN, delaying the first particle collisions by several months. However, the repair work is progressing well, and hopes are high for commencement of LHC science as early as this summer. Now engineers are working hard to avoid a recurrence of the S34 Incident, tracking down similar electrical faults between the accelerator magnets. It seems like they have found many more faults than expected…

According to a recently published progress report, the LHC repairs are progressing as planned, but more electrical faults have been discovered in other sections of the accelerator. An electrical short has been blamed for the quench four months ago, only weeks after the first circulation of protons around the LHC in the beginning of September 2008. It is now of paramount importance to isolate any further potential shorts in the complex experiment. It would appear engineers are doing a good job in tracking them down.

Ribbons of superconducting niobium-titanium wire is used by the LHC to carry thousands of amps of current to the magnets. Connecting the ribbon from electromagnet-to-electromagnet are splices that are soldered in place. Should one of these splices be weakened by poor soldering, an electrical short can occur, making the magnets lose superconductivity, initiating a quench, rapidly heating the sensitive equipment. Various sections are being re-examined and re-soldered. The good news is that this additional work is not compounding the delay any further.

It has been confirmed that there was a lack of solder on the splice joint. Each sector has more than 2500 splices and a single defective splice can now be identified in situ when the sector is cold. Using this method another magnet showing a similar defect has been identified in sector 6-7. This sector will be warmed and the magnet removed. The warm up of this additional sector can be performed in the shadow of the repair to sector 3-4 and will therefore not add any additional delay to the restart schedule. — CERN

Hopefully we’ll see a second circulation of protons this summer, and according to informal rumours from a contact involved in the LHC science, the first particle collisions could start as early as October 2009. I will listen out for any further official confirmation of this information…

Sources: CERN, Nature.com

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  • robby

    Astrofiend Says:
    I was thinking a type 2 supernova, a supermassive star that collapsed into a black hole. Your other entities are very sound, something extemely violent-something all main sequence stars is incapable of producing. You are right when you said no one would feel anything being hit by a UHECR, it just makes me wonder about astronauts,cosmonauts who stayed in earth orbits for months how many hits some may have received from UHECR-this is probably studies that will take a long time to figure out if their lifespans has been affected.
    Thank you for your reply, you’ve given me some very important information and I really appreciate it. Take care

  • robby

    Astrofiend- the information you stated to Mike
    gave me a much better understanding of the benefits of LHC, I had already realized studying sub-atomic particles have great benefits to our world, but you stated in a way that was much clearer than the Science periodicals I read. It is unfortunate that there are people who does not understand about Science and their benefits and really have no business in these feeds,,however, your reply to Mike is what I agree with AstroFiend!,
    Well put and on the money!!!!
    Take care

  • dbdncr

    Olaf – I can agree to a point that the LHC is a beta project, but method and process for connecting / bonding superconductors has been perfected for many years. At the minimum there has been a quality control issue during construction.

    Mike- It’s easy to see these endeavors as a waste of money. Seems like they always end up costing 2-3X more than what they got budgeted for and twice as long to build. Couple that with the above mentioned quality issue and people who never ponder for a moment how science improves their life, you end up with a whole lot of nay-sayers.

    One thing that is undeniable though is mankind advances for better or for worse through science. From the moment the first man used his resources for things other than food, shelter and security he started seriously pondering nature.

    There is a problem communicating bleeding edge science to the public. People see GE on the side of the linear accelerator treating their cancer (the same logo stamped on their light bulbs) Siemens on the side of the CT scanner when a doctor is doing a lung biopsy. And “average joe” has never even heard of Thermo Corp or National Instruments.

    It’s hard to get people interested in science… My wife goes somewhere else when I watch the universe or the science channel. Most of my friends stare at me with blank expressions bobbing their head up and down when I try to explain what I do for a living which usually devolves to “I’m a hospital x-ray mechanic”

    Instead of saying “Ur Dumm go way” Explain that through study of fundamental particles and high energy physics, your “insert loved family member here” can access medical technology that can detect something long before it becomes life threatening.

    During the astronomy conference in austin a couple of years ago, I decided to goto the iron horse to meet the universe today crew. While sitting at a table drinking a beer I was joined by Ethan (sorry if you’re reading this because I can’t remember your last name :) ) Another fellow joined the table and we talked science. Ethan poised a question that to this day I still dedicate some clock cycles to. “How would you communicate astronomy or science in this case to the lay person?”

  • Chuck Lam

    Faulty soldered connections! Shame on engineering! What is wrong with similar material nuts and bolts across the soldered joints? Cheap reliable insurance! Someone needs their butt kicked.

  • robby

    dbdncr -too many lay persons do not know the progress science made for their everyday life.20 years ago I was one of the Hardware,mainframe administrator of a state agency-we needed a new system. I visited a company that had the most advanced business mainframe at the time -a IBM3090x8 or 64MB x8 memory CPU.This was the size of a 3-25CF refrigerators- this was a vast improvement at the time as previous CPU took up a lot more space. The hard drives was in a unit the size of a 1 meter wide 2meter high box and arranged 8 together with a HD controller at the end. There was 60000 sq feet of HD with a total 70 Terra Bytes of storage with a cooling system requiring a 10000 gallon water tank outside.
    Today, I rebuild 1 desktop per year at home as I have 3 ‘puters and all are much more powerful than that monster mainframe. I have a total of 5.5TB internal HD and 3TB external.
    I know a few true ‘computer geeks who has some ‘puter riggs with 25-30TB HD.
    We take up much less space that that 1989 mainframe and not watercooled lol
    People forget their CD,DVD,etc was research from the 50s-60s to develop lazers. I can go on and on .
    I appreciate Astrofriend reply to me as i learned things and was he verified what I believed is true about the violent events of our universe .
    I love his reply to Mike as it is eloquent and
    to me informative.

  • robby

    addendum- I forgot to say each of those HD
    boxes had 15GB, awesome at the time of 1989, today-people throws or mulch them as they don’t have much storage. lol

  • Tech Roach

    Dude, is the LHC JINXED or something ? I’m quite positive that maybe this is it. LHC might find something really really breath taking. The omens prove it to an extent. Now who’s with me ??? ;)

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