缺电！世界最大物理实验室将提前关停

Europe’s energy crisis hits science. The European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN) is developing plans to shut down particle accelerators during peak hours on the electricity grid. Large Hadron Collider（LHC） to end 2022 data-taking season two weeks early to save on electricity, among other measures.

CERN’s governing council agreed to significantly reduce the facility’s energy consumption in 2022 and 2023, after Électricité de France (EDF), a French electricity supplier, asked the lab to decrease the load on its network. 

The council decided to bring forward the lab’s annual year-end technical stop by two weeks, to November 28, and to reduce operations by 20% in 2023 — which will be accomplished mostly by shutting down four weeks early next year, in mid-November. Operations will resume as planned at the end of February, in both 2023 and 2024.

CERN’s flagship machine, the 27-kilometer-long Large Hadron Collider, is a major electricity glutton, in large part because of its 27-megawatt liquid-helium cryogenic system, the largest of its kind in the world. 

图源：CERN官网

更长时间的关停将影响到依赖CERN其他加速器进行实验的科学家。CERN研究和计算主管约阿希姆表示，那些原定于今年最后两周进行的实验将不得不推迟到明年，而明年运行时间的削减也会让使用仪器的竞争变得比以往更加激烈。

The longer shutdowns will affect the scientists who rely on CERN’s other accelerators for their experiments. Those that were scheduled for the last two weeks of this year’s run will have to be postponed until next year, and the competition for the reduced beam time next year will be fiercer than usual, says Joachim Mnich, director for research and computing at CERN.

在今明两年，大型强子对撞机中质子-质子对撞的总数将低于正常水平，但约阿希姆并不认为这会对科学研究产生巨大影响。

The total number of proton–proton collisions in the LHC will be lower than normal this year and next, but Mnich does not expect that to have a huge effect on the science.

此前，欧洲就已经有过大型科学设施因能源危机而停摆的前车之鉴了。捷克最强大的超级计算机Karolina曾被迫以三分之一的容量运行，耽误了1500多名用户的气候建模和药物发现研究。位于布拉格的欧洲超强激光项目ELI Beamlines 也曾被迫关停了数周。

编辑：陈月华

实习生：魏宁

来源：CERN官网 Nature Science The European Times  科研圈