> what is the worst that could happen given the energy involved?
The beam alone carries enough energy to melt a tank, that's why they need those massive, water-cooled beam dumps.
All the magnets combined store 11GJ of energy, which is 2.6 tons of TNT energy equivalent. Considering that they're distributed along the accelerator I guess it would result in a spectacular destruction of equipment, but no fireballs on the surface or anything like that.
Now that I looked it up, the analogy used was "could melt half a ton of copper". So it's less than your average car.
Still a lot of energy to get rid off at short notice, in case of emergency shutdowns. If I recall correctly they modulate the beam with steering magnets so it sweeps through an area and water-cool the target material. And its absorption can't be too high so the energy gets deposited over some depth.
Or from wikipedia:
> Each of the two beam dumps, in case, for instance, of a dipole magnet quench, must be able to dissipate 362 MJ of beam energy in the 90 μs circulation time, which equates to a power of 4 TW.
The beam alone carries enough energy to melt a tank, that's why they need those massive, water-cooled beam dumps.
All the magnets combined store 11GJ of energy, which is 2.6 tons of TNT energy equivalent. Considering that they're distributed along the accelerator I guess it would result in a spectacular destruction of equipment, but no fireballs on the surface or anything like that.