About the US/LHC Project

The Large Hadron Collider at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland is opening new vistas on the deepest secrets of the universe, stretching the imagination with newly discovered forms of matter, forces of nature, and dimensions of space. This site provides general information about the Large Hadron Collider and detailed information about American participation in the LHC accelerator and experiments. U.S. LHC participation is supported by the US Department of Energy's Office of Science and the National Science Foundation.

A proton-proton collision event in the CMS experiment producing two high-energy photons (red towers). This is what we would expect to see from the decay of a Higgs boson but it is also consistent with background Standard Model physics processes. (Courtesy: CERN)

Home > About the LHC > LHC Safety

Large Hadron Collider Safety

Information about LHC safety can be found at the following Web pages and sites.

Addressing the safety of LHC collisions:

CERN's Safety at the LHC page.
Review of the Safety of LHC Collisions: Non-technical summary (pdf) or full report (pdf). This report by the LHC Safety Assessment Group addresses the question of whether there is any danger related to the production of new particles at the LHC. This report is an update of a 2003 paper (linked below), incorporating recent experimental and observational data. It confirms and strengthens the conclusion of the 2003 report that there is no cause for concern.
Report of the Scientific Policy Committee on the 2008 Review of the Safety of LHC Collisions (pdf). The SPC, which advises the CERN Council on scientific matters, reviewed and approved the LHC Safety Assessment Group's report from 2008.
Study of Potentially Dangerous Events During Heavy-Ion Collisions at the LHC: Report of the LHC Safety Study Group (pdf). This report, published by CERN in 2003, reviews the possibility of producing dangerous objects during heavy-ion collisions at the LHC, including negatively charged strangelets, gravitational black holes and magnetic monopoles. The conclusion of the report is that there is no bases for any conceivable threat.
CERN's Ask an Expert: Are LHC collisions dangerous?

Addressing the safety of collisions at other particle colliders:

Review of Speculative "Disaster Scenarios" at RHIC (pdf). This report, published by Brookhaven National Laboratory in 1999, reviews potentially catastrophic processes that might be initiated by collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, a particle collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory that has been in operation since 2000. The conclusion of the report is that the candidate mechanisms for catastrophe scenarios at RHIC are firmly excluded by existing empirical evidence, compelling theoretical arguments, or both.

Addressing the safety of the LHC machine:

CERN and the environment - Includes question-and-answer page about radiation at CERN.
"Protecting the LHC from itself" - This article published in symmetry's December 2007 issue discusses the LHC's machine protection systems and includes a sidebar about LHC radiation safety.
CERN's Ask an Expert: What happens if the beam becomes unstable?