So to get a proton beam for the LHC, CERN prob has to make a plasma and siphon off the moving protons with a magnet. Are the electrons stored somewhere? How? I don’t mean to sound stupid but when they turn off the LHC, all those protons are going to be looking for their electrons. And that’s going to make a really big spark.
[Physics] What does CERN do with its electrons
electrostaticslarge-hadron-collider
Best Answer
You're right that CERN gets its protons by ionizing matter and collecting them. But the number of electrons & protons CERN deals with is far smaller than you might think. They get about 600 million collisions a second at CERN. So call it 1.2 billion protons used per second. $1.2 \times 10^9$. That'd be a large number in dollars, but it's not much in Coulombs.
For comparison, a wire carrying a 30 amp current has about $2 \times 10^{19}$ electrons flowing through it every second. That's a factor of 10 billion. So there's not really any issue disposing of CERN's unneeded electrons. You probably make a bigger spark when you rub your feet on the carpet.
If memory serves, the LHC has been running for its whole history off of a single canister of hydrogen gas.