CERN, home to the Large Hadron Collider, has ambitious plans to grow and upgrade the particle accelerator over the next few years. But engineers have identified a barrier to the upgrade: there isn't one space for new wires in the injectors that accelerate the particles before they enter the LHC.
Previously, when machines had to be upgraded or added to parts of the accelerators, engineers often installed new cables they needed. In this process, they left behind old cables that were no longer in use. Now, a bunch of obsolete cables have created a wall that hinders the way to install the news needed for the next major upgrade of the accelerator.
To create space for his engineers CERN have set the goal of identifying and removing old, unused cables, which are about 9.000 as a whole.
They report that the disconnection of except λειτουργίας καλωδίων είναι ένα από τα μεγαλύτερα και πιο ακριβά σταυρόλεξα του κόσμου, είναι ένα παιχνίδι high-stakes. Αν αποσυνδέσετε το λάθος καλώδιο στην καλύτερη περίπτωση μπορεί να έχετε χάσει κάποιες δυνατότητες παρακολούθησης των δεδομένων και στην χειρότερη περίπτωση, μπορεί να έχετε τραβήξει ένα κρίσιμο καλώδιο ασφαλείας και απλά να μην λειτουργεί ο επιταχυντής. “Γι ‘αυτό είναι τόσο δύσκολο να ολοκληρωθεί αυτή η λειτουργία, γιατί κάθε λάθος θα μπορούσε να ξεκινήσει μεγάλα problems when restarting the accelerator, ”said Sébastien Evrard, a mechanical engineer in charge of the project.
"Of course, in an ideal world you would remove old and obsolete cables before installing new ones, but that did not happen," said Evrard. "Today, all the cables, along with the cable trays that house them, have really taken up a lot of space and it is no longer possible to add new cables."
Engineers can only work at the points scheduled annual technical maintenance, which lasts two months in winter. They've started disconnecting the Proton Synchrotron cables Booster in December, and are now moving to the Super Proton Synchrotron. They won't actually remove the cables until the next tech stop at the end of this year, not so much because they won't have the time, but because they want to make sure the machines haven't been disrupted yet before they get rid of them completely.
Evrard said that in the plans the CERN team had identified about 3.000 obsolete cables in each nozzle and thus 9.000 as a whole. At the same PS Booster, they have already found and disconnected 2.700 from them. Each cable in the PS Booster is about 50 meters long, traveling from the surface of the Earth at the base of CERN down into the injector basement.
The cables involved at CERN are generally related to the control systems and security systems, which have undergone many technological upgrades since CERN was founded in 1954. The proton synchronizer, the oldest of the three accelerators, was first operational in 1959, long before the Large Hadron Collider was built.
