You lost me there; the LHC is under construction at CERN. Do you mean the beam reactor?
I will add that if Gingrich didn't succumb to both his personal problems and the unending war against him by the Dems and the media, things may have been very different today.
Science had few better friends in Congress than Newt. I had the pleasure of telling him so when he signed my copy of "To Renew America".
I had the pleasure of meeting both Brookhaven administrator Mona Rowe and lab historian Robert Crease at conference about a year and a half ago. Mona gave me as a gift an autographed picture of Ray Davis, who had just won the Nobel Prize a few weeks earlier, as a reward for instantly recognizing who he was when she held it up (I had actually misidentified him as Ray Davies. Like most people, I suppose, I keep getting his name confused with the lead singer for The Kinks).