Hi Ron,
Thanks for the link! (We have to keep you on your toes!
)
I believe one of the issues they had come up against was that, by agreement,
for 22 days during winter, they can't operate the collider because of the enormous
load it put on the grid. So by the time they effected the repair, with it being winter
in Europe, they have probably come up against this stipulation, keeping
in mind also that it takes some time for the machine to get down to
operational superconducting temperatures.
The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE)
Spectrum magazine
mentioned this in an article last September, which is also available online here -
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/print/6690
The author of the article, Sally Adde, discusses the winter power curfew
and I quote -
Quote:
|
The LHC’s location enables a unique power procurement system: power comes in from both France and Switzerland. CERN has an agreement with French supplier Électricité de France (EDF) that guarantees a source of reliable, affordable electricity, with one caveat: for 22 days a year during the winter, power costs become prohibitive. (During that time, all the experiments at CERN are shut down.) The contract stipulates that the accelerators will operate mainly from spring to fall, when the public strain on the electrical grid is low. The agreement also means that CERN must reduce its electricity consumption on demand or pay a whopping fine.
|
Cost aside for one moment, I guess these particles have been waiting around
since the beginning of time for us to discover, so hopefully a few more months
in the whole history of time won't matter too much. However, for the engineers
and scientists who have devoted their lives to this machine, the wait must
feel like an eternity.
Best Regards
Gary Kopff
Mt. Kuring Gai
So curious to see results from the testing and how things go down.
