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particle accelerators
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- 1
Reports say the disconnection of the Large Hadron Collider has begun, marking the start of a shutdown phase for the world's largest particle accelerator at CERN near Geneva. The machine, famous for discovering the Higgs boson in 2012, is periodically switched off for maintenance and upgrades between experimental runs. Readers and physicists are following news of the work, with attention on what upgrades could mean for future discoveries.
- 2Particle Accelerators Could Cut Nuclear Waste Danger to Centuries●Radioactive Waste from Nuclear Energy Lasts for 100,000 Years but Particle Accelerators Could Slash That Timeline to a Few Centuries
Scientists are highlighting a proposal to use particle accelerators to transmute long-lived radioactive waste from nuclear energy, potentially reducing its hazardous lifespan from around 100,000 years to just a few centuries. The idea, known as accelerator-driven transmutation, is being discussed as a way to ease one of nuclear power's biggest drawbacks: the need to store spent fuel safely for many millennia.