Safer Environment Ltd - doing exactly what it says on the tin!

In CERN‘s Large Hadron Collider (LHC), protons circulate in opposite directions within separate vacuum chambers to prevent unwanted interactions with residual gas molecules. Only at four designated interaction points do the beams merge into a single chamber, where collisions occur inside the ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb experiments. To ensure that particles produced in these high-energy collisions reach the detectors with minimal interference, the beam pipes must be extremely transparent to radiation. This requirement places exceptionally high demands on both materials and manufacturing precision. Beryllium is uniquely suited for this role due to its very low atomic number, which minimizes particle scattering and energy loss. In addition, beryllium combines low density with exceptional mechanical strength and good thermal conductivity, allowing it to withstand the intense stresses and heat loads present during collider operation. Despite these advantages, beryllium is expensive and hazardous to handle, making its fabrication particularly challenging.

CERN faced a critical challenge when the last global supplier capable of machining and welding beryllium beam pipes to the required tolerances ended production in 2023. At the same time, the High-Luminosity LHC upgrade demands several new beam pipes, as multiple experiments will replace their innermost pixel detectors. To secure the supply of these essential components, CERN decided to establish an in-house manufacturing facility at its Prévessin site.

“The new workshop will allow CERN to control every step of production, from metallurgical analysis and precision machining to electron-beam welding and non-destructive testing. This approach ensures strict quality assurance, flexibility in design, and long-term preservation of a critical technology. Ultimately, CERN needed a sustainable, reliable solution to meet future experimental requirements and safeguard expertise vital to particle physics research,” says Isabel Bejar Alonso, CERN senior project manager

Beryllium processing is very niche, and while there are facilities in Europe that manage beryllium they are private and manage all their requirements inhouse. Beth Walke) from Safer Environment Ltd is on the international Beryllium Health and Safety committee with experience in setting up and managing a commercial facility in the UK. She came into contact with CERN after Isabel Bejar Alonso , Senior Project Manager setting up the beryllium facility heard Beth present at a committee meeting and approached her for advice.

Beth says, “CERN needed advice on best practice in building and managing the facility safely. This is a really niche area, there is virtually no literature on how to approach this as the few companies that do this work are commercial with no need to publish in the public domain. I had just set out to start my own consultancy, having worked on a project building a beryllium facility for an SME which prioritised safety over actual machining. CERN wanted to do the same, prioritising safety so that chimed with my ethos. It’s also a very specialised area – there are only three people I am aware of with the expertise needed, and we were all involved in the project!”

Beth says, “Working on the project was absolutely fantastic, especially working with the team. I felt they really wanted to understand the logic behind the decisions I made, which was great as I don’t feel I have done my job properly unless people know exactly why processes are in place. It was all very open and collaborative, and I think CERN have done a phenomenal job from the safety point of view, I cannot fault the ethos.”

As a new company, working with CERN has been an excellent opportunity. Beth says.