Proposed upgrade

Proposed upgrade

CMS detector for LHC
Main article: Super Large Hadron Collider
After some years of running, any particle physics experiment typically begins to suffer from diminishing returns; each additional year of operation discovers less than the year before. The way around the diminishing returns is to upgrade the experiment, either in energy or in luminosity. A luminosity upgrade of the LHC, called the Super LHC, has been proposed,[21] to be made after ten years of LHC operation. The optimal path for the LHC luminosity upgrade includes an increase in the beam current (i.e., the number of protons in the beams) and the modification of the two high-luminosity interaction regions, ATLAS and CMS. To achieve these increases, the energy of the beams at the point that they are injected into the (Super) LHC should also be increased to 1 TeV. This will require an upgrade of the full pre-injector system, the needed changes in the Super Proton Synchrotron being the most expensive.

Cost
The total cost of the project is anticipated to be €3.2–6.4 billion.[1] The construction of LHC was approved in 1995 with a budget of 2.6 billion Swiss francs (€1.6 billion), with another 210 million francs (€140 million) towards the cost of the experiments. However, cost over-runs, estimated in a major review in 2001 at around 480 million francs (€300 million) for the accelerator, and 50 million francs (€30 million) for the experiments, along with a reduction in CERN's budget, pushed the completion date from 2005 to April 2007.[22] The superconducting magnets were responsible for 180 million francs (€120 million) of the cost increase. There were also engineering difficulties encountered while building the underground cavern for the Compact Muon Solenoid, in part due to faulty parts loaned to CERN by fellow laboratories Argonne National Laboratory and Fermilab.[23]
David King, the former Chief Scientific Officer for the United Kingdom, has criticised the LHC for taking a higher priority for funds than solving the Earth's major challenges; principally climate change, but also population growth and poverty in Africa.[24]

Computing resources
The LHC Computing Grid is being constructed to handle the massive amounts of data produced by the Large Hadron Collider. It incorporates both private fiber optic cable links and existing high-speed portions of the public Internet, enabling data transfer from CERN to academic institutions around the world.
The distributed computing project LHC@home was started to support the construction and calibration of the LHC. The project uses the BOINC platform to simulate how particles will travel in the tunnel. With this information, the scientists will be able to determine how the magnets should be calibrated to gain the most stable "orbit" of the beams in the ring.