For a while now Russian internet trolls have been claiming that the CERN particle accelerator will create a black hole which will suck in the world, a cry which as been taken up by the same conspiracy people who believe that jet planes have room for high level chemical sprays to power Chemtrails.
But it looks like Putin's moves to shut down European gas until the EU obeys his will, is doing a better job at slowing down the European Organisation for Nuclear Research. CERN, is drafting plans to shut down some of its particle accelerators at periods of peak demand.
Serge Claudet, chair of the center’s energy management panel. CERN is also considering how it could idle the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest accelerator, if necessary.
“Our concern is really grid stability, because we do all we can to prevent a blackout in our region,” Mr. Claudet said.
The preparations show the far-reaching impact of Moscow’s move to transform Europe’s dependence on Russian energy supplies into a weapon of economic war.
Emergency measures are now on the table after Russian energy giant Gazprom PJSC said Friday it would indefinitely stop natural gas deliveries through the Nord Stream gas pipeline, Russia’s main artery for delivering the fuel to Europe, pushing the continent closer to gas rationing as winter approaches.
CERN sits on a sprawling complex that straddles the French-Swiss border and is one of France’s largest electricity consumers. At peak operation, it consumes nearly 200 megawatts of power, a third as much as the nearby city of Geneva.
So far it has found the Higgs boson, a particle that gives mass to all other particles and was probing the properties of the Higgs and looking for particles that could constitute dark matter, the substance that scientists theorize pervades the universe but has so far gone undetected.
CERN’s aim is to keep the LHC operating and to avoid a sudden shutdown that could disrupt the $4.4 billion machine, Mr. Claudet said. The LHC is one of eight accelerators in the complex; there are also two particle decelerators at CERN that allow scientists to study antimatter.
CERN is in discussions with its electricity supplier, state-controlled French power giant EDF SA, to receive a day’s warning that the center would need to consume less electricity, Mr. Claudet said. CERN would give priority to shutting down other accelerators besides the LHC, lowering the center’s electricity consumption by as much as 25 per cent.