Do me a favour all you scientists go and conjugate with an urangatang maybe it’s offspring would be smarter.

Bloody stupid spell-check!

This is an extract from Wikipedia:

By 1995, a billion cubic meters of the gas had been collected and the reserve was US$1.4 billion in debt, prompting the Congress of the United States in 1996 to phase out the reserve. The resulting “Helium Privatization Act of 1996″ (Public Law 104–273) directed the United States Department of the Interior to start liquidating the reserve by 2005.

So, it was simply sold off to pay the National Dept.

Here’s a brain puzzler for you. Suppose enough people think your way and feel that the LHC poses too much of a threat to the planet and all life on it. They manage to get it shut down. This prevents earlier discovery of something (either directly or via a spin-off technology) that, as it turns out, is essential to avert a dire disaster that will wipe out all life on the planet (or at least enough of it to make things rather bleak for a few millennia). Had we gone ahead with the LHC, we would have had the technological advances to either mitigate or outright prevent the disaster.

Just a thought experiment for you. While I understand your reservations, there is no way of knowing that preventing the LHC is going to be better overall for the planet. It very well may be the worst thing to do.

On another note, you are equating the pursuit of science with twisting science to destructive ends. Keep in mind that all of the dire things you bring up have less to do with the discoveries than with how those discoveries are used or abused. As Bjoern pointed out, do you make the same cries against viral and bacterial experimentation for medicine? Those could just as easily be used for harm. Could some weapon come out of the LHC experiments? Maybe. Is that a reason to shut the whole thing down? I don’t think so. If so, then the same criticism should be leveled at every scientific advance that humans have made: the wheel (used to make war machines – chariots), bells (used to make cannons, along with fireworks), flight (used to make fighters and bombers), anything to do with computers (unmanned aerial vehicles that can drop or guide bombs).

Any technology can be used for good or evil, and it is almost never the individual scientists making the initial discoveries that are involved in those decisions.

“Dr Edwin Teller – the inspiration for the fictional Dr Strangelove – wanted to use nukes to dig canals, blow up mountins, in mining ad nauseam.”

Well, yes, Teller was nuts in some ways. But remember, my question was about the dangers of nuclear waste, not nuclear bombs…

“I also worry that the LHC folks may be blinded all too easily by the excitement of their work and the possible delusion (although I hope it isn’t a delusion!) that they know enough to be safe.”

But the safety of the LHC was (also) judged by an *independent* commision, not (only) by the “LHC folks”.

“I don’t know if, outside of the scientific minority, most people in the wider public think the LHC is money well spent ..In fact I know a few who think its a total waste of cash.”

Well, then the LHC still hasn’t done enough public outreach. The LHC is not only important on its own (increasing our knowledge about the universe in many ways), but also lead and will lead to lots of important spin-offs. Example: the cooling techniques which were developed for the LHC are now also used for fusion reactors – and fusion reactors will help to reduce the CO2-emissions. Another example (not specific for the LHC, but illustrative in general): the beams of particle accelerators are now routinely used for the treatment of certain cancers.

(BTW, there is no way Higgs bosons could in any way be used for bombs. And don’t tell me that’s merely a matter of new technology, and people will surely find a way to use them for bombs! This is a matter of *physics*.)