CERN collider project back on track

Munich

The governing council of CERN, the European particle-physics laboratory, has approved an eight-year financial plan that will focus tightly on its main project, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

The plan's approval should end a period of uncertainty at the lab, after the emergence of hefty cost overruns on the LHC, and problems with the manufacture of its 1,000 or so superconducting magnets (see Nature 413, 441; 200110.1038/35097216). The project is now due to be finished in 2007, two years later than planned.

“There have been hiccups and bumps with the LHC, as happens with very big projects,” says Luciano Maiani, CERN's director general. “But although resources are tight, we are now on course to make it happen.”

The council also elected Robert Aymar, a French plasma physicist, to take over from Maiani in 2004. Aymar is currently director of ITER, an international project to build an experimental fusion reactor. But he is well acquainted with the LHC, having chaired the external review committee established last year to advise the CERN council on how to bring the project back under control.

CERN's previous heads have all been high-energy physicists, but Aymar says he plans to make an asset of his different background. “I will be free of any prejudice,” he says, adding that he will appoint a deputy who is more familiar with CERN's scientific work.