Polite Debate

4 Nature Vol. 286 3 July 1980 High-energy physics Schopper, would be able to organize and prototype vitrification plant operating at draw on talent throughout CERN, for Windscale by 1990 if the go-ahead for the short and long periods, avoiding the career plant can be given some time this year. LEP leaps ahead problems and inflexibility that would come The decision for British Nuclear Fuels, THE European Centre for Nuclear with a new "LEP division". "We will which runs Windscale, will not be easy, Research (CERN) last week made a firm bring the work to the people", he said. however; it will have to choose between its proposal lo its 12 member states for a new The CERN Council has adopted a own HARVEST process and the French accelerator to be built in the 1980s. The "firm" budget for 1981 of 596 million equivalent (A VM) which has been machine, called LEP, is a 30 km circum Swiss francs (£156 million), but this operating commercially since 1978. ference ring for accelerating, storing and includes no provision for the construction Officials are keen to point out that a colliding very high energy beams of of LEP. Schopper will propose a running decision to opt for A VM would not mean electrons. The proposal already bears the budget which will include LEP in six the end of HAR VEST, which should be mark of CERN's firebrand director months' time: he expects it to be a little kept going to keep later options open. general-designate, German Professor larger than the 198 I budget "but we are The government plans to start producing Herwig Schopper: LEP is now cheaper only talking of a per cent or two". CERN vitrified high-level waste by the early 1990s than in any former design - 900 million staff are now working on reducing the cost for several years' storage and then final Swiss francs (£235 million) compared with of individual LEP components. The level disposal in some sort of demonstration 1100 million Swiss francs (£280 million). of the budget will determine not whether, facility at the end of the century. There are The scientific case for LEP is considered but how fast, LEP can be built. three options for final disposal - on or by high-energy physicists to be out • CERN's 25-metre-square anti proton under the ocean bed or in deep geological standing, better than that for any accumulator is to receive its first particles structures. accelerator since the early 1950s, when the in the next few days - less than two years The Radioactive Waste Advisory Com Lawrence cyclotron was built to create after the ground was first broken. The mittee, a group of independent advisers, what was then thought to be the quantum accumulator will be tested with protons, recommended in its first annual report, of the nuclear force-field - the pion. LEP, but the intention is to use it to reduce or published earlier this year, that research on it is hoped, would produce the intermediate "cool" the transverse motions of anti the first two options should be increased. vector bosons, the zo and the W + and w-, protons created in proton-target collisions. The most promising option seems to be the predicted quanta of the Salam The antiprotons, a few per collision, will be disposal in deep geological structures . The Weinberg unified theory of the weak and accumulated and then injected into the 400 government programme of test-drilling in electromagnetic interactions. Testing this GeV super proton synchrotron counter various rock formations throughout the theory is now recognized to be crucial. current to the SPS proton beam. country, however, has excited considerable Success will give confidence to more Robert Walgate public opposition. The UK Atomic Energy ambitious attempts to construct unified Authority, which started the programme field theories. Failure, however, would Radioactive waste now under the aegis of the Department of also be suggestive. the Environment, has so far been able to CERN's proposal is strictly for "LEP drill boreholes at only one site in Scotland. phase I'', which involves building a tunnel Polite debate Planning permission for three others has so large that ultimately beams of 130 GeV A first attempt by the UK National been refused and the authority is awaiting could be retained (more than enough to Radiological Protection Board and the the results of appeals. The Institute of create W + - w-pairs), while cutting back British Association for the Advancement Geological Sciences is now making prelimi on accelerating cavities (which inject the of Science to stimulate public discussion on nary surveys of about fifteen other sites for energy into the beam). The result is that the problems of radioactive waste manage the Department of the Environment in the LEP phase I would reach 50 GeV per ment was a damp squib. A meeting they hope of drilling at some of them fairly beam, enough to make the zo and make organized on 18 May, attended by inter soon. the initial tests of the Salam-Weinberg ested parties in the nuclear industry, Judy Redfearn the anti-nuclear theory. government agencies and Russian language LEP phase 1 also cuts back on experi groups, did little to uncover the detailed mental facilities: only four of the possible technical problems. eight experimental halls would be Part of the reason for the low key in Finns struggling equipped. And it proposes a new injection which the meeting was conducted appears cutbacks in university Russian system, which makes use of existing to have been the decision of the British Recent the falling off in the numbers accelerators at CERN and eliminates the authorities that, even with the new nuclear departments, sitting for Russian need for a large electron synchrotron, programme, fresh arrangements for long of school-children examinations in secondary which would have been the biggest in the term disposal will not be needed until the Advanced-level and the virtually overnight decision world, merely to inject electrons into LEP. end of the century. schools the Russian department of In contrast, the intersecting storage rings, Both intermediate and high-level waste to close down caused one of CERN's greatest technical have been stored at Windscale for 25 years the University of Lancaster have successes, will not now be needed for the and could sit there for many more without considerable concern in British academic think, the electrons and will be devoted to experi the authorities becoming unduly bothered. circles. Very different, one might where a recent report ments outside subnuclear physics. If anything, the intermediate waste is a situation in Finland, urged sub Professor Schopper, who is at present more urgent problem - it accumulates of the Ministry of Education increases in the teaching of Russian. director of the German electron physics fairly rapidly and storage facilities are stantial to a memorandum submitted laboratory DESY near Hamburg, said this costly. High-level waste disposal is According month to the Minister of Education, week that it was most important that the nevertheless receiving most attention. Out last Paer Stenbaeck, at least one group of CERN Council had recommended that of a total waste management research students is however at risk. The LEP be built out of CERN's running budget of £25 million, the UK expects to memorandum, drawn up jointly by the budget rather than as a separate spend more than £10 million this year on Finland-USSR Society and the Fund for programme. A director has been appointed one method of treating high-level waste: the Promotion of the Study of the Russian lo acl as LE P project leader, as soon as the HARVEST vitrification process which language claims that a "worsening" of the governments give approval; this is Dr has been under development by the UK position of Russian language teaching in Emilio Picasso, a prominent Italian Atomic Energy Authority since the late Finnish secondary schools could be a physicist at CERN. The project leader, said 1950s. The British government plans a © 1980 Ma~millan Journals Ltd t)():!~-i)l{J(,/),(()/ 270004-1)2$t)l .1)() .

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