Update -
$10 billion collider to be started up at half-power; costly repairs to continue
12:00 AM CDT on Saturday, August 8, 2009
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcont...1.4bfe29e.html
GENEVA – When launched to great fanfare nearly a year ago, some feared the Large Hadron Collider would create a black hole that would suck in the world. It turns out the Hadron may be the black hole. The Large Hadron Collider near Geneva was completed in 2008 but has worked for only nine days and has not yet smashed any atoms.
The world's largest scientific machine has cost $10 billion, has worked only nine days and has yet to smash an atom. The unique equipment in a 17-mile circular tunnel with cathedral-size detectors deep beneath the Swiss-French border has been assembled by specialists in many countries, with 8,970 physicists eagerly awaiting the start-up...
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NUCLEAR-POWERED BORING MACHINES "DIGGERS"
The September, 1983 Omni ran a picture story on the "Subterrene," a nuclear tunnel-boring machine developed at Los Alamos. The machine burrows through deep underground rock, heating it to a molten state (magma), which cools after the Subterrene moves on. The result is a tube with a smooth, glazed lining that can be used for the high-speed transport shuttles that link the sub-base complexes.
http://www.subversiveelement.com/Dulce.html