Logistics

For questions about how to deliver goods to/from CERN, please refer to the “PROCEDURES” section on SMB official website.

Note that:

  • All material you might need for your experiment has to enter CERN via the Goods Reception service. They will give you a “reception number“, which will be needed to ship your material back.
    • If you temporary bring material/equipment from EU, it is advisable to ship it to CERN Prevessin Site:
      Route de l’Europe
      Building 904
      F – 01630 CERN PREVESSIN
  • The material that will enter the accelerator area might be exposed to ionising radiation!
    • Users should expect damages and activation of their equipment, induced by ionising radiation.
    • The recovery of radioactive equipment might be delayed and/or restricted. See official procedure here.​
    • As rule of thumb, given the Swiss regulation, CERN EDMS#942170 and EDMS#942171, all material leaving the accelerator area after beam operation must be considered as radioactive unless declassified by the CERN radiation protection service.​
      • ​Equipment leaving the accelerator must be placed in the CLEAR RP Buffer Zone (building 6104) and registered using TREC.
      • At least 5 working days are required for declassifying an equipment, usually requiring a gamma spectrometry analysis.
      • CLEAR RP Buffer Zone (building 6104) is not meant for long term storage or cooldown of radioactive equipment. If required, CLEAR has a storage for radioactive material in building 150/R-005.
  • CLEAR is on the Meyrin (CH) site, bld. 2010.
    • ​Bringing material/equipment to Switzerland might be affected by customs formalities/fees.
    • CERN has a site in Prévessin (France) to which goods could be temporary delivered with no/minor customs formalities.

Some hint/general rules that might be helpful:

  • if you come and leave with your own equipment (e.g. by car), you must have proof of ownership of this equipment and/or declare it at arrival:
    • by asking a “authorization for the entry of private equipment into the CERN domain” to the agent in charge at the B-A-or C door at your arrival.
    • and/or by passing by the Goods Reception (building 194) at your arrival.
    • if you need to cross borders (i.e. you are not coming from Switzerland), and easy way to perform custom formalities might be to use a Carnet A.T.A. This will allow you to cross the border(s) (following its own formal procedure) and you will be able to just enter and leave CERN with it.
      • Even in this case, it might convenient to pass by the Goods Reception (building 194) at your arrival.
      • At departure, it might still be convenient to create an EDH shipment request, specifying “Self transport“.
  • if you ship your equipment, you can find all the information on the CERN Logistics webpage.
  • to ship back your equipment, an EDH shipment request has to be made.
    • All material will need to leave from the site (Meyrin or Prevessin) where it first arrived.
    • It is possible to request that CERN handles all the steps, but in this case you need a CERN budget code where the shipment costs will be charged.
    • On the EDH form, you can specify that the recipient will pay the shipment. In this case the recipient has to organise the shipment.
      • If it is a small equipment (<30 Kg), it is possible to just specify a UPS account on which charge the shipment, and CERN can take care of organising it.
      • For bigger equipment, the user has to organise the transport with an external carrier and needs to indicate on the EDH form the name and pick up date from CERN.
    • For radioactive material, the shipment request is automatically generated via TREC – the service for traceability of potential Radioactive Equipment at CERN. The responsible for the equipment will need to fill the EDH request with all necessary information.
      • The procedure for shipping radioctive material is available here
      • NOTE: The receiving institute has to be listed in the CERN database of “Approved Institutes for Importation/Exportation of Radioactive Material”. See http://cern.ch/radship
      • NOTE: if levels of radiation are low enough (See ADR 2017 2.2.7.1.1, IATA 2018 10.3.1 + 10.0.1.4 & IAEA SSR-6 2012 Art. 236) the equipment can still be delivered using standard courier – i.e. no special transport required, but your institute will still need to be registered in the radship database at CERN!