The delivery of Russian magnets to equip transfer lines to feed CERN’s new LHC collider is now complete.
Over the past two years, magnets have been steadily arriving at CERN from Novosibirsk’s Budker Institute.
Some 360, 6 m dipoles and 180, 1.4 m quadrupoles, now safely at CERN, will be installed in two new underground transfer tunnels, each about 3 km long, connecting the SPS and LHC/LEP tunnels. One of these tunnels recently linked with the 27 km LHC ring.
Each month some 10 magnet consignments travelled the 6000 km from Siberia, each bearing two dipoles and a quadrupole. Unlike the LHC’s main magnets, these are not superconducting. The Budker Institute supplies them under the 1993 Co-operation Agreement, which covers Russian participation in the LHC. Preliminary work on dipole elements is handled by the Efremov Institute, St Petersburg, and on quadrupole elements by the ZVI factory in Moscow. The additional manufacture and the final assembly of the magnets is done at Novosibirsk.
