"Russian Collider": why a 21-kilometer underground ring tunnel was dug in the Moscow region in the 80s

— Gennady Nikolaevich, before talking about the sad fate of the accelerator-storage complex, tell us when and how the idea of ​​its creation appeared?

- It followed from the logic of a kind of competition among physicists from the most developed countries in creating more and more powerful charged particle accelerators, which made it possible to penetrate deeper and deeper into the structure and properties of the intra-atomic world - the microcosm with its mysteries and discoveries.

In general, this is an interesting paradox of physical science - the smaller the distances to penetrate deep into the atom, the larger devices have to be created, up to the most grandiose ones.

But the goal - mastering the energy of the atom - is worth it.

So, in the second half of the 20th century, Soviet physicists pulled ahead thanks to the creation of the U-70 accelerator - a proton synchrotron on ordinary magnets with a maximum energy of 70 gigaelectronvolts (GeV), with a particle orbit length of 1.5 km.

It was built near the surface in Protvino in seven years, that is, without a tunnel, and launched in October 1967.

• Institute for High Energy Physics (now - A.A. Logunov Institute for High Energy Physics of the National Research Center "Kurchatov Institute").

  Construction of the experimental hall of the U-70 proton accelerator for an energy of 70 GeV (the largest in Russia)

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• © I. Morokhov

- Apparently, to the 50th anniversary of Soviet power?

- Yes.

Over the next five years, it remained the world's largest accelerator in terms of energy, until in 1972 a six times more powerful proton synchrotron was launched in the USA in a tunnel more than 6 km long.

A similar machine was later built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva.

The most complex problems of fundamental physics could not be solved in the experiments carried out, and in Europe they thought about an even larger project, which eventually resulted in the construction of the Large Electron-Positron Collider (LEP) in 1983-1988, for which a 27-kilometer tunnel was dug , in which two accelerating paths were mounted in opposite directions.

This made it possible to carry out particle collisions, which doubled the effect of observations - hence the term "collider" itself, from the English collide ("push").

By this time, the UNK project, later referred to in the press as the “Russian collider”, began to be implemented in the USSR, although, unfortunately, it did not come to the creation of the accelerator itself in the 21-kilometer ring tunnel dug for ten years.

- What was its difference from LEP?

- The difference from the Geneva LEP was that UNK was supposed to accelerate not electrons, but 2 thousand times heavier protons from the current U-70 accelerator, which gives much stronger physical effects during collisions.

That is why in the LEP tunnel, CERN physicists in the early 1990s decided to replace the entire accelerator part with the use of hadrons (as protons are called differently), and this work led to the launch in 2008 of the LHC - the Large Hadron Collider, still the largest in the world.

And only here one of the scientific goals was achieved - the so-called Higgs boson was discovered, which confirmed the validity of the generally accepted theory of the structure of matter.

But scientific research needs to move on, and now CERN is embarking on a project for a new FCC collider in a new, already 100-kilometer tunnel.

This is the picture of the course of events in the cognition of the physical foundations of our world, in which the UNK project, even if it was not implemented, was one of the steps ...  

- As I understand it, the main merit in promoting the idea of ​​building the UNC belonged to the famous scientist, academician Anatoly Logunov?

In many ways, yes, but he was not alone.

His role in pushing through the UNK project is indisputable, especially since Anatoly Alekseevich was vice-president of the Academy of Sciences, a member of the Central Committee of the CPSU.

And almost the entire physical community of the country was interested in returning the palm, as it was in the first years after the launch of the U-70.

After all, several major discoveries were made on it - for example, for the first time it was possible to register antiparticles created in a collision on a target. 

• Anatoly Logunov

• © Wikimedia

But the solution of a number of physical fundamental problems in the picture of the microcosm required higher energies, and in the same way, many scientific institutes of the country and, without exaggeration, hundreds of enterprises participated in the creation of the UNK project and the work on its construction.

Therefore, work on the UNC with a design beam energy of 3000 GeV was gradually going on, and already in the early 1980s everything began to be implemented.

By decision of the government, construction work began in 1983.

Even then it was clear that the problem would be solved using Western technologies.

The tunnels needed not only the usual "warm" magnets that work at room temperature.

With such a ring size, they can only accelerate protons up to 600 GeV, which is five times less than the design power.

Therefore, the UNK project included two more rings with electromagnets with a superconducting winding.

We did not do them then, but over time we were able to solve this problem.

In the city of Ust-Kamenogorsk (now it is already in Kazakhstan), special lines were built at a metallurgical plant, which were made by the conductor itself, wires that were twisted into bundles of a superconducting cable.

The assembly of these magnets was arranged in our experimental production institute.

The total number of magnetic dipole blocks in each ring should have been about 2.5 thousand pieces, each weighing about 10 tons.

— How was UNK supposed to work?

- According to the project, two superconducting ring accelerators of the same size were to be built, in which protons are accelerated in opposite directions.

The first ring with conventional "warm" magnets was supposed to receive a proton beam through the injection channel from the operating U-70 accelerator and raise its energy to an intermediate value of 400-600 GeV.

And then the second ring with the help of superconducting magnets had to bring it to a final value of 3000 GeV.

With such energy, the effect of particle interaction would increase significantly, and even more interesting physics would be revealed.

Another such superconducting ring would accelerate protons in the opposite direction, which would provide a collision energy of 6000 GeV and would justify the term "Russian collider".

• Work on the construction of the Accelerator-Storage Complex (UNC) - a project to create a proton-proton collider on superconducting magnets at the Institute for High Energy Physics

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• © Valery Shustov

— Why do we need magnets in the collider, why are they so important?

- The tunnel for the collider is made in the form of a ring so that the proton beams during the acceleration process can turn along the annular trajectory, and not fly out onto the walls of the vacuum chamber, and turning dipole magnets are needed.

The laws of physics, discovered many years ago by Faraday and Maxwell, work at any energy.

In general, the prospects that opened up then fascinated our physicists, and work in the late 1980s was in full swing in our country.

To speed up tunneling, two Canadian LOVAT tunneling machines were purchased, which simultaneously not only drilled tunnels with a diameter of 5.5 m (this is like a single-track metro line), but also immediately left behind a concrete lining with metal lining from the inside.

The construction of the ring took place at a depth of 20 to 60 m and almost did not affect the territory that was on the surface of the earth, since two dozen vertical shafts were made to ensure penetration.

- And what was the initial amount allocated for the construction of UNK?

- The whole project was estimated at about a billion more Soviet rubles, a dollar in Soviet times cost 60 kopecks.

- When, according to the plan, the complex should have been put into operation?

- According to the project, they were supposed to launch in the mid-1990s - meaning two accelerator channels, add a third a little later - then it would have turned out to be the most powerful collider in the world for several years, before the commissioning of the LHC in Geneva.

But at that time the situation in the country after the events of 1991 was not easy.

Not only economic, but also political.

The country's budget fell into the hands of parliamentarians, they set the tone in determining expenditure items.

There and we had lobbyists who supported fundamental science, who believed that it was necessary to move forward with the UNK project, to fight for the palm.

There were also opponents of spending on fundamental science, although as a percentage of the entire budget, they were already chronically lagging behind similar spending in developed countries.  

In the meantime, the Americans have begun to implement their most ambitious SSC superproject - a proton collider in a tunnel 87 km long, that is, more than three times surpassing the same European LHC project.

We walked about 5 km in Texas, the costs began to be calculated in billions of dollars, but in 1994 the project was closed.

The US congressmen considered that even for them it turns out to be too expensive and it is better to join the LHC project.

We were left alone with our UNK, which in the 1990s had barely enough money to complete the tunneling and pay the wages of the builders.

— When was the UNK tunnel completed?

The ring closed in December 1994.

I was just present at the ceremonial breaking of the tunnel, when the lintel of the oncoming penetrations was broken.

Surveyors and other specialists were not mistaken, the ring closed perfectly, it was possible to start work already in the tunnel itself.

But there were chronically insufficient funds for this, even the figures approved by the budget were not fulfilled, so the prospects became more and more vague.

Moreover, the UNK project also had serious opponents - for example, the well-known academician Yevgeny Velikhov, head of the Kurchatov Institute, was the antagonist.

• Evgeny Pavlovich Velikhov, Academician and Vice-President of the Academy of Sciences of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, speaks at a press conference on the forthcoming All-Union Meeting of Scientists on Peace and the Prevention of Nuclear War

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• © Vyacheslav Runov

Why was he against it?

- It seems to me that the peculiarity of the Kurchatovites is that they have always considered themselves the leaders of Russian physics.

Perhaps, in the time of Igor Vasilyevich Kurchatov himself and the "atomic project" this was the case.

By the way, it was he who in the 1950s insisted on the need to build the most powerful proton accelerator in the world, and the U-70 project itself was prepared at the Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics (ITEF).

Returning to the UNC... it also seemed like some kind of confrontation between the personalities of the two academicians, Logunov and Velikhov, each had his own scientific interests and tasks.

But there is only one budget...

It even got to the point that Velikhov, in an interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta in early 1999, said, referring to the UNC, the following: “15 years ago it became clear that we would never build the Serpukhov accelerator, nevertheless, we constantly pumped huge funds into it , tearing them away from the really necessary prospective work.

And now, unfortunately, he turned out to be right in terms of stopping work on the UNK project, since it was in the post-default year of 1999 that a common understanding finally came about the need to close the project and conserve the tunnel.

Although many regret - even with meager funding for several years, we could well have at least put "warm" magnets in this tunnel and increase the energy of the U-70 almost tenfold - from 70 to 600 GeV.

Almost all the necessary magnets had already been manufactured and brought to the institute by the end of the 1990s.

- Where are they now?

“They are still lying there unclaimed.

Only a couple of dipoles were installed in a trial way in the tunnel at a regular place.

- And how much money may be needed now to complete this ring and still launch the first stage?

- If we count from the cost of the entire UNK, this is relatively little money, at current prices for the installation of "warm" magnets, something about 200-300 million current rubles is needed.

But the fact is that over the past years, other infrastructure of the facility has also been seriously destroyed - roads, mine shafts that serve to communicate with the surface, and everything else.

So the total costs will already be completely different, these are billions of rubles.

And most importantly, serious scientific problems at the energies of the first stage of the UNK have already been practically solved in accelerator centers in Europe and the USA.

— You mentioned that, in addition to purely scientific tasks, Soviet scientists, when conceived by the UNC, also had the desire to overtake competitors, to hold the palm in world science.

But what was the most important thing?

- The line of leadership was to support the entry into the forefront: the Soviet should be the best in the world.

This line has been clearly traced as long as the Soviet Union existed.

After that, the understanding came that we can no longer be the best, so it would be nice to have decent cars.

Unfortunately, now few people are interested in the energy of the U-70 accelerator, well, dissertations on it can still be riveted, as they say.

Although even 55 years after its launch, it remains the most powerful accelerator in the former USSR.

But we are globally mastering the already passed route, additional studies of characteristics are being carried out, some new interaction coefficients are entered in the table, but this does not promise serious discoveries.

— Is it possible to say that if everything was normal with our country, if the UNC were completed, then it would have every chance to “cancel” the Large Hadron Collider and become the center of attraction for world physical science, which CERN is now?

- I'm afraid not, because CERN has the most modern scientific research - CERN invented the Internet for data exchange.

• The Large Hadron Collider

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- Judging by the publications in the media in the mid-1990s, then many still had a glimmer of hope that the UNK project, which had seriously stalled, could be completed.

Was there a real opportunity to do this?

- On the personal instructions of Academician Logunov, I was then engaged in, so to speak, a PR campaign for this project.

I went to the State Duma, met with deputies, by that time I already had ingrained convictions that it was necessary to complete at least what we already, in general, had in our hands.

That is, to put "warm" magnets, to make a 600 GeV proton accelerator, which would get its own plot in the world experimental field.

But even this small part of the overall task, to which there was very little, was not allowed to be realized by the opponents of the project.

Our opponents, as I have already said, mainly represented the Kurchatov Institute, and in the end they managed to win this fight.

- In 1994, 96 billion rubles were allocated in the federal budget for the construction of UNK.

I read that real income was less than half of this amount.

Why didn't all the money come through?

- The same thing that periodically happens today: they stole it.

Of course, we are not at IHEP.

It's just that the government constantly, based on some of its settings, adjusted certain expenses.

What was planned was canceled, replaced by promises to compensate somehow, or they did not even promise anything.

We even had protest marches, we walked to Moscow on foot.

On the square near the building of the government of the Russian Federation, scientists held rallies.

Biophysicists came there, and there were also physicists from us, because science in our country then was completely on the sidelines of state interest.

— Now, at least from the outside, it seems that the situation with state funding of science has changed for the better.

– Although we have declared the period from 2022 to 2031 the decade of science and technology, but for many people from the scientific community, in terms of salaries, this sounds somehow even mocking.

We have created a powerful administrative layer everywhere, which takes a lot of money.

For example, in the Protvino IHEP, researchers who defended their dissertations in physics receive an order of magnitude less than a number of employees of the highest administrative level and other people who are not directly involved in scientific activities.

- There was an opinion - in the same media - that it was largely a forced necessity to complete the UNK tunnel - if the project was abandoned immediately after the collapse of the USSR, even before the completion of the ring, there could be some serious environmental consequences.

- Indeed, a huge cavity in the ground in aquifers is unsafe.

It is not known how entire layers of soil will behave, whether the earth will fall into it.

Although it is small, but still.

But this is more of an attempt to get support in a financial sense.

After the ring is completed, it is completely concreted with separate holes in its northern part and almost completely covered with metal from the inside, again it is not exposed in the northern part, it needs to be finalized.

Groundwater is constantly flowing there.

And therefore, the amount that is still allocated for servicing UNK is about 30 million rubles a year, mainly goes to pumping out groundwater.

The pumps are running all the time.

Still, the flooding of such an object is much more dangerous than staying in its current form.

- And what will happen if the UNK still floods?

No one knows for sure, but definitely nothing good.

— For laying the UNK underground tunnel, expensive Canadian

There were at least two of them.

One of them was dismantled and transferred to the Moscow metro, where it is still used, as far as I know.

The other seems to have remained underground.

I don't have exact information.

Some experts say that it was sort of pulled out, but I did not find confirmation.

— Can UNK be called the largest project of Soviet science?

— In the USSR, there were larger projects of defense significance.

Somewhere to the north there is an underground facility more grandiose than the UNK.

Huge tunnels were dug there, apparently for submarines.

• Institute for High Energy Physics (now - A.A. Logunov Institute for High Energy Physics of the National Research Center "Kurchatov Institute")

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• © Andrei Solomonov

- I met the expression in relation to UNK - "a monument to Soviet science."

Do you agree with this? 

- Well, that's not entirely correct.

A monument is when there is a spiritual need to come and bow.

The fate of the UNK project, like any unfinished project, is evidence of someone's mistakes.

- Regarding the final conservation of the object.

You mentioned that in the late 1990s there was a general understanding that it would not be possible to implement it.

But when exactly did this uncertainty of the object's fate result in a clearly adopted bureaucratic decision?

- In 1998, Vladimir Bulgak was the Minister of Science and Technology for a short time.

As far as I know, he signed, although I myself have not seen this document.

But the default that occurred then in August hit the economy very hard and, in fact, completely buried the UNC.

- The underground ring exists anyway, it has no scientific prospects, as it turns out, but can it be used in any other way?

- First, this tunnel must be finally completed, there is still a danger of flooding.

What area is unprotected?

- 6-7 km in the northern part are subject to water penetration, since even during the work on fine-tuning the lining of the tunnel from the inside, there were places with small groundwater leaks.

At first, a temporary pumping out of the incoming water was set up - a small stream was brought to the surface, flowing into a natural reservoir, and it remained so.

Funds for pumping out water, for eliminating the "climbs" into the tunnel of curious diggers, for the protection and power supply of mine superstructures - all this translates into a couple of tens of millions of rubles a year.

Is it possible to somehow use such a gigantic object in the future, even if not for its intended purpose?

- There are three options off the top of my head.

Firstly, if the tunnel is well sealed, it is possible to carry out railway tests there, after all, 21 km of rail track - and no interference.

The Ministry of Transport somehow expressed interest in this regard, but again, "there is no money, hold on."

Secondly, the tunnel can be used as an induction storage of electrical energy, which can be used in case of some kind of emergency.

“Something like a regional spare battery?”

- Yes.

Remember 2005, when a fire at the Chagino substation left half of the Moscow region without electricity.

There would be no such consequences if there was such a storage device that can quickly replenish large electrical networks.

- How realistic is this?

— A specific IHEP project to create such a storage device was even presented at the II Innovation Forum in 2007 to Sergey Kiriyenko, then head of Rosatom.

I think he remembers...

- What is the third option?

- Cultivation of champignons.

- After the railway range and the giant battery, it doesn't sound so grandiose.

 “These underground spaces are great for that.

The temperature there is constant all year round, around 18 degrees Celsius, there is electricity.

— Did the IHEP management try to implement any of these options in practice?

— Насколько я знаю, никаких поползновений со стороны руководства в этом плане нет. Они сидят тише воды ниже травы, сайт института сейчас — жалкое подобие прежнего. Когда-то он был лучшим среди сайтов российских научных институтов. В целом ситуация не очень радужная: научное сообщество затихло — нет никакой полемики, обсуждения проектов каких-то, в наукограде Протвино практически перестал работать дом учёных в собственном смысле этого термина.

• Наукоград Протвино, Государственный научный центр Российской Федерации — Институт физики высоких энергий, Федерального агентства по атомной энергии («Росатом»)
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• © Andrei Solomonov

— Как я понимаю, кроме самого 21-километрового тоннеля успели также построить несколько ответвлений и какие-то дополнительные подземные помещения?

— Да, они для кабельного хозяйства, есть ответвления для перспективных каналов. Размах был широкий. В качестве расширения тоннеля на 50-метровой глубине был сделан один большой экспериментальный зал специально под российско-американский физический эксперимент «Нептун». Его объём составил около 10 тыс. кубометров. Когда работы в нём были окончены, шахтёры сыграли там в футбол с физиками.

— С учётом нынешней ситуации, в том числе политической, туманными перспективами нашего будущего научного сотрудничества с Западом, есть ли какой-то смысл проект УНК как-то реанимировать по его прямому назначению?

— Сейчас, наверное, ни один физик не скажет, что в этом есть необходимость. До сих пор все наши физики заряжены на обработку данных, полученных в ходе экспериментов в БАК. Наши учёные по договорам получали доступ к большим массивам данных, и часть их до сих пор находится в обработке. Думается, когда закончат с этими материалами, будут, возможно, дальше участвовать уже в новых проектах ЦЕРН.

— Такой грандиозный подземный объект, как УНК, после остановки работ и консервации привлекал немало разного рода сталкеров, диггеров и прочих искателей приключений. Насколько легко туда было проникнуть и как обстоит дело сейчас?

— Yes, there were too many entry points to the facility.

There, along the entire length of the ring, there were several mine stations through which it was possible to descend into the tunnel from the surface, some were even equipped with elevators.

But, in principle, even without them, it is not such a problem for diggers to go down 40-60 m. When such visitors became very frequent, it was decided to close and weld up the extra doors.

Moreover, there were cases of theft of equipment from some ground facilities of the UNK project.

In general, this problem can be said to be solved.

- And what did those who went down to the UNK see?

There is one solid dark tunnel.

- Lighting as such is there.

I haven’t been in the tunnel since 2008 and I don’t know how things are now, but earlier, with the permission of the director of the institute, it could be turned on during excursions.