"near" is a relative term that isn't specific enough to get an idea of how dangerous something is.
It's dangerous to be near hydrogen sulfide. It's dangerous to be near a primed hand grenade. It's dangerous to be near an artillery shell impact. It's dangerous to be near a drunk driver. It's dangerous to be near an active battlefield or even near a war.
But they are all different nears.
When you say its dangerous to be near the plane of the collision, are we talking 1m, 10m, 100m, 1000m, etc? Are there dangerous byproducts created that might kill you even after the event itself? That's useful information. A general "don't be near" isn't really helpful.
My reading is that "in the plane" literally means in the plane, +- a couple or tens of meters, depending. The paper is concerned with effects on the earth's surface, in an aircraft or orbit the duration of exposure and lack of stuff for neutrinos to run into probably means it's less of a concern. To put a number on it, they give examples of accelerators buried at 300 meters which would create a radiation hazard at a radius of 62 kilometers where the plane exits the surface (assuming earth is spherical).
As far as the danger, the paper estimates up to a few mSv/year if you hung out in the wrong place all the time. You definitely wouldn't want to have a town in the way of that, but it's not an immediate danger on an individual level. The danger would be greater/more concentrated if there were straight segments in the accelerator, or if it was closer to the surface (smaller circle of intersection).
"My reading is that "in the plane" literally means in the plane, +- a couple or tens of meters, depending."
What wad said was so vague as to be practically useless.
"...they give examples of accelerators buried at 300 meters which would create a radiation hazard at a radius of 62 kilometers"
Again, this is overly vague and unhelpful. As I replied to LegitShady, no specific mention is made about the type of radiation dangers or how long radiation would be expected to linger in soils etc.
Well said. I was annoyed by the lack of specific information for exactly the reasons you mentioned
More specific estimates of safe distances versus collider power would be helpful, same too about the nature and type of radioactive byproducts in soil (what elements would be expected to become radioactive along with their half-lifes, etc.).
Sometimes I think it ought to compulsory for scientists to study philosophy—at least its parts that deal with logic, language and semantics.
Philosophy defines near —like good— as a 'simple notion' that cannot be subdivided into simpler terms. The word needs qualifiers/quantifiers (figures, distances, amounts) for it to be useful—info that the paper was overly vague about or omitted to specify.
