An individual working on the infamous Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Europe has been arrested on suspicion of ties to terrorism.

The good news is that CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, says that none of its work could be utilized for military purposes. The bad news is that someone with links to terrorism was able to infiltrate a terribly expensive project that helps represent western scientific discovery.

So there’s that.

“He was not a CERN employee and performed his research under a contract with an outside institute. His work did not bring him into contact with anything that could be used for terrorism: CERN is a particle physics research laboratory whose research addresses fundamental questions about the universe,” a statement from the organization said.

CERN is currently preparing the Large Hadron Collider for a restart later in 2009 after it was forced to shut down last year due to technical problems. It is also known as the Big Bang Experiment as it seeks to simulate the Big Bang. Some people fear that such an experiment could potentially destroy Earth, but scientists have assured the project is safe.

“None of our research has potential for military application, and all our results are published openly in the public domain. CERN is providing the support requested by the French police in this enquiry,” the organization concluded.

My concern would be less with the research he’d conducting then with the fact he has access to facilities that could possibly be targets for terrorists he sympathizes or works with. But I’m no military professional, so…

Update: TimesOnline says the terror group in question is Al Qaeda.

Fears that al-Qaeda could be targeting Europe’s nuclear industry were fuelled today after French secret services arrested a nuclear researcher on suspicion of providing a list of terrorist targets to North African Islamic radicals.

The 32-year-old man, who was detained along with his brother, works for the prestigious European Organisation for Nuclear Research (Cern) in Geneva, Switzerland, according to French police sources…

The suspect, who is reported to be highly educated, is believed to have been in contact with members of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), an Algerian-based terrorist organisation which joined Osama bin Laden’s network in 2007.

A source said French intelligence officers had intercepted messages in which the man had suggested targets in France.