CERN draws up shutdown plans to save energy
- Reference: 1662532094
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/09/07/cern_draws_up_shutdown_plans/
- Source link:
Serge Claudet, head of the CERN Energy Management Commission, lately [1]told The Wall Street Journal that CERN is making plans to shut down some of its eight particle accelerators, including the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), to assure the stability of the electrical grid in Europe.
The proposal is expected to be presented to the governments of France and Switzerland by the end of the month.
[2]
"Given the current context and as part of its social responsibility, CERN is drawing up a plan to reduce its energy consumption this winter, which will be put forward to the CERN Council during the forthcoming meeting the week of 26 September," a CERN spokesperson told The Register in an email.
[3]
[4]
The $4.4 billion LHC is the world's largest publicly known particle collider, consisting of a 27 km (17 mi) circular tunnel in the vicinity of Geneva, Switzerland and France. It was used to observe the [5]Higgs boson in 2012. The giant particle smasher resumed operations [6]on July 5, 2022 , after [7]a three-year shutdown for maintenance and upgrades.
Presently, CERN is using the LHC to explore the origin of mass, dark matter and dark energy, antimatter, and other gaps in the Standard Model of particle physics.
[8]Smart thermostat swarms are straining the US grid
[9]Xcel smart thermostat users lose their cool after power company locks them out
[10]China's Chongqing manufacturing hub extends factory power cuts indefinitely
[11]California asks people not to charge EVs during heatwave
According to The Wall Street Journal, CERN officials are talking to representatives of France's state-run power company EDF SA to arrange a day's warning should a shutdown become necessary to save power. CERN aims to keep the LHC operational if possible by prioritizing the shutdown of its other particle accelerators, for a 25 percent energy savings.
CERN [12]says the LHC and associated experiments have consumed between 600 GWh and 750 GWh per year, while total energy consumption for CERN is about 1.3 TWh per year.
[13]
France produces about 500 TWh per year, the Geneva canton of Switzerland produces 3 TWh per year, and the whole of the EU manages to generate about 3,400 TWh annually.
Operating the LHC and other particle probing equipment now looks a bit extravagant in light of European energy shortfall following from the illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing diplomatic and trade fallout. France and other countries in Europe rely on natural gas and oil supplied by Russia, which has become scarce since last week when Russia [14]indefinitely suspended gas flowing from its Nord Stream 1 pipeline.
France has accused Russia of using energy supplies as "a weapon of war," [15]according to Reuters.
[16]
Dmytro Kuleba, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, has urged European officials to [17]stand united against Russia rather than selling out Ukraine to resolve unrest over energy prices.
On Tuesday, European Commissioner for Energy Kadri Simson [18]told The Associated Press that the EU's energy ministers plan to meet in Brussels on Friday to discuss how to deal with the energy market turmoil. ®
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[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/europes-energy-crunch-squeezes-worlds-largest-particle-collider-11662294416
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2Yxhrued0nRpOJYWTVgQqQwAAAEY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Yxhrued0nRpOJYWTVgQqQwAAAEY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Yxhrued0nRpOJYWTVgQqQwAAAEY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://home.web.cern.ch/news/press-release/cern/cern-experiments-observe-particle-consistent-long-sought-higgs-boson
[6] https://home.cern/news/news/cern/third-run-large-hadron-collider-has-successfully-started
[7] https://home.cern/news/news/accelerators/lhc-report-another-run-over-and-ls2-has-just-begun
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/13/smart_thermostat_strain/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/01/xcel_smart_thermostat_power/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/25/chinas_chongqing_orders_factory_extends/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/01/california_ev_heatwave/
[12] https://home.cern/resources/faqs/facts-and-figures-about-lhc
[13] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Yxhrued0nRpOJYWTVgQqQwAAAEY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[14] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60131520
[15] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/france-accuses-russia-using-gas-weapon-war-2022-08-30/
[16] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Yxhrued0nRpOJYWTVgQqQwAAAEY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[17] https://twitter.com/DmytroKuleba/status/1567045626793189376
[18] https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-science-indonesia-jakarta-european-union-5e5463099308a2492080ab75fb3cb64a
[19] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: 1.3 TWh per year
Tight-lipped? EdF has the maintenance schedule and expected restart dates for each of their reactors right on their website.
Most of the NPPs undergoing maintenance/repairs were scheduled to be back online by December this year already, long before the recent announcement.
Together with the energy-saving measures already implemented, I don't expect CERN to have to shutdown. Only blackouts and load shedding are likely to incur in Germany, but that really is their own darn fault for removing 8 GW of capacity from their grid.
Propaganda
I don’t come to the Reg for news propaganda. The shortage of power is due to lack of planning not the war in Ukraine. With Cern’s budget and needs they could have built their own nuclear power station quite easily.
We need to stop blaming everything on this war. Yes it’s bad but it’s not the root cause of our problems.
Re: Propaganda
I don't come to the Reg for news propaganda.
Not to read it maybe, but to spread it, it would seem.
Ukraine is a (large) straw that broke the camel's back
but yes. At least in the UK, our energy policy has been very lacking. Government drank the Kool-aid of "it'll all be solved by having a Smart Grid and smart meter demand management." We've neglected nuclear, closed coal plant. So when the wind doesn't blow, all our eggs are in gas. And, to top it all, we've closed the strategic gas storage facilities.
This was always going to end in tears.
"the world's largest publicly known particle collider"
Is this suggesting that someone has a private particle collider ?
Would this be in a volcano on an island owned by someone with a penchant for white cats ?
Re: "the world's largest publicly known particle collider"
Ahh, yes, cats. Douglas Adams tried putting us off the track by saying it was mice experimenting on us when every fool knows it's the cats.
Isn't this normal?
The maintenance periods are scheduled for year end (YETS - Year End Technical Stop). I always thought part of the reason for this being in the winter was to help manage grid loading?
Not that much compared to baseload
At the optimistic end, 600GWh per year for LHC implies that shutting off the other accelerators will save 700GWh per year, an average of 80MW load.
That's a small generating unit. Sounds very token. Would it be more related to the cost?
Re: Not that much compared to baseload
It's not a constant load, the peaks are very much higher so while on average the load is not massive, at run time it can be quite significant.
Moving to night running might be an option.
Boring
CERN runs the same experiments over and over. It must be the most boring place to work.
Re: Boring
Millions of times a second, and every one gives has a slightly different outcome.
Consider writing "trigger" software to look at over a million complex events every second that has to select a thousand that are worth recording along with a number of uninteresting events as controls. They cannot save every event, nobody has networks fast enough or the Yottabytes of memory it would need.
The data collected will keep particle physicists happy for decades.
Also over 70% of people working at the LHC are engineers who keep the thing running, most of the science on it's results are done by university teams either remotely or on secondment.
That might be boring for some people but I know the people who are involved are far from bored.
Re: Boring
Not really,
The boring stopped after they had finished creating the LHC tunnels.
It may recommence if theydecide to build an even larger the next generation collider.
1.3 TWh per year
and only 500 TWh produced by France ... This is a serious portion !
With the confusing mess of EDF having stayed tight lipped for more than one year about when any reactor would be restarted (32 down out of 58, remember ?), and now the govt saying all of them will magically be restarted by feb. 2023, I don't know what to think. Probably safe to assume the govt words are a lot of bollocks.
On top of this, Macron is patronizing everyone (minus his friends) on how to spare electricity.
End of the day, it is likely CERN will have to be ready to shut down the LHC in case things go pear shaped ...