03 February 2010. Two technicians of our Department (Nunzio Giudice and Nunzio Guardone) have played an important role in the LHC repair endeavour. After the September 2008 incident, which happened just a few days after the accelerator's startup, the magnets damaged by an explosion were repaired or replaced during a year-long forced shutdown period. At the same time all the splice connections between the accelerator magnets were inspected and a program to make them safer and more resilient was carried out. While the LHC resumed working in November 2009 and has since delivered a month of good data, the final step of the consolidation effort took place just recently, during the usual "winter shutdown" of all CERN accelerators (motivated by electric energy peak-high price i n the dead of winter).
At the beginning of the new year all 4200 splice connections and a new magnet quencing protection system had been repaired and were ready to be tested. A 65-people strong task force led by Eng. Fabio Formenti has carried out the testing campaign in a record-short time, using ELQA (ELectrical Quality Assurance) measurements. Among the 65 members of this task force, were technician belonging to, or associated with, the INFN Sections of Catania (Nunzio Giudice and Nunzio Guardone indeed), Firenze and Bologna.

Part of the time, the two Nunzio's have been in charge of supervising other technician teams who actually performed the individual test operations. For about three weeks the two Nunzio's descended every morning in the LHC tunnel, 100 meters underground, to work there for several hours. Bikes were used for transportation along the 27 km ring of the LHC. At any time they had to wear a heavy but required survival kit which provides a supply of breathable air and illumination in case of emergency.