SOCHI, September 19 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's science and education minister said on Friday that plans to build a particle collider near Moscow were pointless, calling on Russian scientists to join in large-scale international projects. (Large Hadron Collider: how it works - Image gallery)

Andrei Fursenko's statement came nearly a week after a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences said international scientists were considering an earlier Russian proposal to build a new device in the Moscow Region, which would be larger than the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland.

"I believe it is senseless to build a collider like the LHC in Russia. We need to participate in large-scale international projects. Copying the LHC is absolutely senseless," Fursenko said.

The international LHC project has involved more than 2,000 physicists from hundreds of universities and laboratories in 34 countries since 1984. Over 700 Russian physicists from 12 research institutes have taken part.

The LHC is located in a circular tunnel 27 km in circumference 100 meters below the Swiss-French border, and is operated from the control room of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known by its French acronym CERN.