Church stands next to empty Russian laboratory (4)

I believe the answer is:

cern

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'laboratory' is the definition.
(nuclear research laboratory)

'church stands next to empty russian' is the wordplay.
I cannot really see how this works, but
'church' could be 'ce' (abbreviation for Church of England) and 'ce' is found within the answer.
This explanation may well be incorrect...

Can you help me to learn more?

(Other definitions for cern that I've seen before include "place of 16A 25 24 [LHC]" , "Nuclear research centre in Switzerland" .)

I've seen this clue in The Independent.

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