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Heavy Ion Alert

See: Heavy Ion Alert Open Letter Response to the Swiss Control Committees

See: Reply from the Control Committees (translated)

See: Scan of Reply (DE)

See: Heavy Ion Alert Appeal to the Swiss Control Committees

Summary of Correspondence

Heavy Ion Alert is an international group of critics - including Swiss - concerned about the insufficiency of existing safety arguments regarding LHC heavy ion collisions - between lead nuclei - and the unsatisfactory nature of the associated regulatory process.

Heavy Ion Alert's Appeal to the Control Committees

We had sent a letter to the Control Committees of the Swiss Federal Assembly. These Control Committees have a parliamentary oversight role relating to the governing Swiss Federal Council, the Federal Administration, the Federal Courts and other bodies entrusted with tasks of the Confederation.

We outlined two concerns in our letter. The first related to the failure in CERN's safety review (LSAG-report) for its safety arguments to be compatible with the independent statements of CERN's own researchers. These relate to LHC's potential production of particles with established risk associations - known as strangelets. The other concern was that, in reply to a question from members of the Federal Assembly, the Federal Council had misinformed them that both the LSAG and the Scientific Policy Committee (SPC),who reviewed the LSAG report, were independent of CERN. We urged the Control Committees to investigate both these grave concerns.

Reply from the Control Committees

Concerning the issue of strangelets risk, the Control Committees instead referred to 'tiny black holes' (micro black holes) - which we never mentioned - and regarding the safety of CERN's research, the Control Committees indicated that they had no powers of supervision over CERN itself. They further claimed that our concerns regarding independence were open to question and not warranting their intervention.

Heavy Ion Alert's Open Letter Response to the Control Committees

Relating to our concern that the important strangelet issue of our letter had apparently not been read, we indicated that SERI (the Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation) is a part of the Federal Administration, so therefore becomes part of the Control Committees' supervisory remit. Further, we detail various systemic neglects in the way the Federal Council deals with such risks. We also provide detailed evidence for the lack of independence from CERN of both LSAG and the SPC. We make recommendations that include the commissioning of a genuinely independent, multidisciplinary panel to review the safety of the LHC.

See:  Correspondence between Heavy Ion Alert and the Swiss Control Committees