From swords to plowshares
Despite struggling through economic failure during the 1990s, Russia's devotion to scientific collaboration in high-energy physics has grown stronger.
Teaming up with the European laboratory CERN, scientists from the 18 member states of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, built part of the new Compact Muon Solenoid detector for the Large Hadron Collider. Making the particular subsystem—the Hadron Calorimeter Endcap—demanded almost 300 tons of brass. To secure the metal, the organization kicked off a unique recycling project in Murmansk.
There, at a Cold-War-era navy yard, workers disassembled thousands of artillery shells. A foundry melted down the thermos-shaped cartridges and sent the brass to a machining shop in Minsk, Belarus. After more than two years of work, the Dubna-led collaboration shipped its masterpiece to become part of the 12,500-ton CMS particle detector at CERN.
Dan Green, the US program manager for CMS who supervised the project, says the group of about 100 engineers was a perfect fit. "They're very smart and well-educated," he says. "I just had a lot of confidence in those guys." With the CMS finished and the LHC nearly complete, the Russians willcontinue their legacy of international collaboration, says Green. "They're great physicists."
Dave Mosher
Click here to download the pdf version of this article.
