Quench of LHC inner triplet magnet causes a small leak with major consequences

Re:Quench of LHC inner triplet magnet causes a small leak wi... by db48x on Friday July 21, 2023 @05:18AM (#36811733)

It’s just helium. Have you ever bought a helium balloon, the kind that float? This is the same stuff that’s in the balloon. It’s also used as a mixture gas by deep–sea divers. It's chemically completely inert; breathing it in doesn’t have any particular effect on the body. It’s harmless, unless you fill an entire room with it so that all the oxygen is displaced.

Are people really so scientifically illiterate that they immediately assume that if anything goes wrong with a complicated machine that it will be harmful to their health?

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Re:Quench of LHC inner triplet magnet causes a small leak wi... by gus_massa on Friday July 21, 2023 @08:47AM (#36813154)

My guess is that people imagine that the high energy particle beam transforms the helium and nitrogen used to cool the magnets in radioactive gases that may be dangerous.

But the beam never colides with the gas deposits. The helium and nitrogen are used to cool the magnets that are used to bend the beam that travels inside a vacuum tube.

[And even if the beam colides with the gas deposits, I don't expect too much radioactive waste. Each particle in the beam has a lot of energy, but there are very few. This links https://public-archive.web.cern.ch/en/lhc/Facts-en.html says "trillions" ( 10^12 ?) of protons, but a glass of water has like 10^26 protons. A nuclear power plant has much more radioactive material and during normal operation produce much more collisions that can turn container radioactive.]

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Re:Quench of LHC inner triplet magnet causes a small leak wi... by db48x on Friday July 21, 2023 @09:47PM (#36822362)

I’m not sure it’s safe to make that assumption. I really think people just hear the word “leak” and assume the worst.

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