The LHC Will Be a Stillborn

Mark at the CosmicVariance.com just wrote about the LHC, as it was reported by BBC. So I am going to say a few things.

My prediction is nothing will come out of LHC. It will be a still birth. I based my prediction on information revealed by this article, which was first meantioned by Lubos. What did the article say? It said that they were planning to shut the LHC down for half of the year and operate only half of the year to save electricity cost.

In view that despite of the huge cost overrun during the construction of LHC, member states REFUSED to increase the budget and CERN had to cut corners some where else and borrow money through 2010 to get the machine built. And in view that a global energy crisis is looming. My conclusions is by the time LHC is finished, the electricity price will be so high that CERN simply do not have the budget to pay electricity bill to run the machine. Mean while, do not expect any budget increase from member states. The top priority for national governments will be to concentrate resources to research alternative energy source to deal with the energy crisis, budget for high energy physics research will be greatly reduced, not increased.

Let's see how much electricity the LHC consumes. From CERN provided information. We know it consumes 200 mega watts of electricity, equivalent to half of the consumption rate of the whole Geneva City. Running the machine for one year would consume 1.75 billion kilowatt*hour of electricity. The electricity now in USA costs almost 12 cents per kwh, almost double the figure less than 2 years ago. By the time LHC is really to do some real physics experiments, I expect electricity could cost as much as half a dollar per kwh. That would put the electricity cost at 0.88 billion dollars per year. That alone is already more than CERN's annual budget.

And it consumes a huge amount of fossil fuel to generate that electricity. At half kilogram per kwh, it burns 0.88 billion kilogram of coal to generate 1.75 billion kwh. That's 8.8 million tons of coal. Takes one million trips of huge trucks just to transport that amount of coal. I am not sure where the morality is to burn all the fossil fuels for some vague physics result that no one even knows for sure will come out, while citizens are having a hard time keep themselves warm in the winter.