Large Hadron Collider (LHC)

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva Switzerland is slated to start up later this year. According to documents on the LHC website the stored energy per beam is 362 MJ (million joules) at peak (collision) energy. The beams of protons will circulate in opposite directions and collide in a controlled enclosure where physicists will analyze the sub-atomic particles created. The round trip will take just about 100 microseconds (.0001 seconds).

So let's do some quick, back of the cocktail napkin calculations based on a worst case scenario. Imagine that a single proton beam gets out of control and is 'aborted'. This means that 362 million joules are directed into a 'dump' in one machine revolution (.0001 seconds). To convert from power (joules) to energy (watts) we do a simple conversion energy = power per unit time or: 362,000,000 Joules / .0001 second or 3,620,000,000,000 Watts (3.62 trillion watts)! That is (according to Wikipedia) the average energy used by the United States in 2001!

In other words it is slightly less than the energy needed to power 3000 Delorians in Back to the Future (1.21 Gigawatts!).

Does anyone see the problem with this?