Culprit found for latest Large Hadron Collider leaks

The latest delays to the restart of the Large Hadron Collider are likely to have been caused by a faulty hose, according to CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

Liquid helium leaks in the world's largest particle accelerator were probably caused by a problem with a flexible hose in the liquid helium transport circuits, the organization said an article in its official bulletin, published on Friday.

Click image for gallery on the Large Hadron Collider.

(Credit: Maximilien Brice for CERN)

The hose vented helium into the vacuum insulation of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), CERN officials suspect.

CERN has revised the restart date of the LHC several times since the experiment was put out of action in September by an electrical fault. According to the latest estimates, the particle acceleration experiment is unlikely to restart before mid-November.

The vacuum leaks occurred in sectors 8-1 and 2-3 in July. At the time, CERN said that the sectors would have to be warmed from 80 Kelvin (-315.67 degrees Fahrenheit) to room temperature to effect repairs.

On Monday, the organization changed that plan, saying the vacuum subsectors at the end of the sectors will be warmed to room temperature to locate the leaks and repair them. The rest of those sectors will "float" in temperature from 80K.

Both leaks happened at the place where the final magnet of those sectors, which is known as Q7, joins the electrical feedbox, known as the DFBA.

The LHC experiment is designed to enable research into fundamental questions about nuclear particles, such as the existence of dark matter.

Tom Espiner of ZDNet UK reported from London.

[monkeyfun14]

Seems like this is turning into a huge failure.

[ca5ter]

Yeah, you know thing are going to work the first time, every time. And if they don't they are failures.

Good grief this machine isn't some social networking site. It's a freaking real invention!

[ettusnape]

Through perseverance many people win success out of what seemed destined to be certain failure. - Benjamin Disraeli

[bj1126]

Isn't using the term "restart" a little generous? They haven't technically started it yet.

[Blacksheep1982]

This thing is turning into a train wreck and who knows what will happen if they ever get it working, I'm not sure it's a good idea to be creating miniature black holes within our atmosphere anyway. Hopefully they don't have that kind of "who knows what will happen" attitudes, like one of the early theory's on nuclear fission in which some scientists wondered if splitting the atom would set off an endless chain reaction destroying everything in the universe. Good thing it didn't.

[BogusBasin]

Many Republicans say humans are not "powerful" enough to affect climate change in any significant way. Yet many republicans worry about the Hadron Collider creating black holes. I find this interesting in the "oh look how that homeless person drools all over himself" kind of way. If creating black holes was profitable, I'm sure they would all fire up their own Hadron Collider and try to get a tax break on it.

Amen

[gertruded]

Republicans are only good at making money, and the more immoral the method the better.

[ed_reinertsen]

Enrico Fermi?s 1942 nuclear fission reactor in Chicago was not the first reactor on Earth. Sixteen dormant natural fission reactors have been found deep in the ground at the Oklo, Okelobondo and Bangombe uranium mines in Gabon, West Africa (Precambrian Francevillian formation) that took place 1.8 billion years ago. These self-sustained, spontaneous natural nuclear fission reactors ran intermittently for a million years or more, averaging 100kW of power output before the uranium depleted. George Cowan in his 1976 paper A Natural Fission Reactor concluded ?In the design of fission reactors, man was not an innovator, but an unwitting imitator of nature.?
In the spring of 1972 Mr. Bouzigues an employee at Pierrelatte, a nuclear fuel processing plant in France noticed something suspicious. Some of the U- 235 samples gathered at the Oklo mine tested at 0.7171 percent, slightly lower than the usual concentration of 0.72 percent. The 0.72 figure was thought to be a constant rate with all natural uranium 235 found in the earth?s crust, on the moon and in meteorites; so this finding was very unusual. The discrepancy was small, but it was considered significant because the ore from the Oklo mine involved 700 tons of uranium; the shortage of U-235 came up to roughly 200 kilograms ? enough to make six nuclear bombs.
For three weeks specialists from around the world worked with the C.E.A. (The French Commissariat a Lenergie Atomique) to solve the mystery of the missing U-235. The first three weeks were spent investigating threatening explanations with no satisfactory conclusions. The correct explanation originated after someone recalled published predictions that calculated what was needed to happen for uranium ore deposits to undergo self-sustained fission. Some/most of the scientists were skeptical at first because of the high degree of engineering and physics that went into building a nuclear reactor. Calculating back to 1.8 billion years ago, they realized that the U-235 then comprised about 3%. This is high enough to have nuclear fission to occur if other conditions were right. After the tests were completed the explanation was obvious. The abundance of the light elements and their isotopic composition expected from nuclear fission was so high that no other conclusion could be made.

[askgees]

A billion dollar piece of equipment brought down by a 50 cent part. LOL

[timber2005]

And how many of those 50 cent parts do you think it had exactly? Its dozens of miles in diameter, let alone 3.14x that in circumfrence!

[inachu1]

Would not be surprised that the entire repair process is being done without supervision.
Never know when a tech gets all religious and starts to think the machine is so godless and starts to harm or gets a passive agressive nature about him/herself.

[joad2]

It'll be in full swing by 2012, maybe the Mayan calendar was predicting the start up of this ridiculous piece of technology...or maybe they could turn it into a food generator for third world countries...or just send them the money it's taking to build this potential catastrophe...

[mudphud]

It's not that surprising, previous colliders have taken a while to get up and working, they just didn't bring in the media during the first power up. I can't believe the number of people on a tech site posting they're concerned about black holes. The energies of particles produced by the collider strike the earth naturally, and so far no black holes. Even if it forms black holes, they will be too small to be stable. Is the chance of a black hole being formed zero? No, but it is about as likely as turning into a whale and a bowl of petunias.

[ettusnape]

Share and Enjoy.

[Mac OS XP]

Man they spend tons of money and tons of energy on a huge machine that keeps breaking? Who designed this thing?

[madeinttown]

Engineers and scientists.

[mraardvark]

Things rarely work right the first time in science. This is easily on the list of most complicated things created by the hand of man. Building a multi-mile long tube, surrounding it some of the most powerful electromagnets on earth, chill it to near absolute zero, then feed millions of volts into the thing while it holds a near perfect vacuum inside is not a trivial task. Considering most people can't even handle their home plumbing, two small leaks isn't exactly ineptitude.

[T543212345]

I'm a bit surprised at the amount of technology/scientist/engineer bashing in the comment section on a site devoted to technology news (I mean, these are the folks who do the cutting edge research that ultimately produce our technology of choice...). Anyone want to offer a theory to explain this curiosity?

[madeinttown]

The internet allows people to post more honest opinions since they are quasi anonymous. This also causes some people to try to purposely arouse reactions out of others, we call them trolls.

Additionally, those who respond do not necessarily reflect the reader base of this website. It only reflects the small portion of the readers who comment.

[ca5ter]

Agreed. Comments on news/blog stories are relatively young, and consequently most commenters are as well. As this type of per interaction ages, hopefully the statements will mature and we will all gain better insights.

One would think that readers of this article could reflect upon the lessons learned. Meaning, regardless of the organization, budget, or medium, problems will arise and anything overlooked can stop a project from moving forward.

[Its_Steve]

Let's not forget the really scary part of this story.
http://www.pleasewashhands.com/2009/02/tom-hanks-wants-to-destroy-us-all/

[Michichael]

Yes, let's all mock the most complicated feat of engineering known to man because it isn't working right the first time. Heaven forbid there be some accounted for flaws - they've already got plans in place to remediate the problems people.

I'd like to see any one of you criticizing their work do better.

[disco-legend-zeke]

2 feet of bad hose out of hundreds of miles?
assuming just once around is 36 miles, 2 feet would be an error rate of .00000105

I have worse than that for my garden hose.