June 22, 2006
NSF supports underground lab effort
The National Science Foundation has reversed an earlier decision and will support UW efforts to draft a conceptual design proposal for a Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory in the Washington Cascades, university officials have learned.
The decision, which resulted from a UW appeal filed in October 2005, means the University could receive $500,000 from the science foundation to develop a design proposal. Two other sites, vertical-access mines in South Dakota and Colorado, also are being considered.
Marilyn Cox, director of the UW deep underground lab office, said the University would craft a design proposal with significant changes to address scientific and community concerns. It appears the National Science Foundation’s concerns were procedural rather than technical or scientific, she said.
“We are gratified that the National Science Foundation’s re-examination confirmed our belief that we had written a strong proposal,” Cox said. “We continue to believe a horizontal-access laboratory, which would allow users to drive to the lab, is the best design. However, we also intend to adapt our proposal in response to what we have already learned from this process.”
Because the University has limited time to develop a design proposal and because overall construction costs are a concern to the scientific community, the UW will continue discussions with the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway and focus on the Pioneer Tunnel option that was included in its original proposal. That site has an existing tunnel and a facility there can be developed as more space is needed and funds are available, she said.
Another option in the original proposal, at Cashmere Mountain along Icicle Creek near Leavenworth, will not be pursued, Cox said.
“In the original proposal, the Cashmere Mountain site required us to build a new tunnel,” she said. “But we have learned that the scientific group advising the NSF has been advocating a site that can be developed incrementally. Using an existing tunnel lets us do that.”
The Pioneer Tunnel’s portal lies just west of Stevens Pass near the community of Scenic. The 5.3-mile tunnel, which is 3,400 feet deep, was built to assist in construction of the parallel New Cascade Tunnel that handles rail traffic for Amtrak and Burlington Northern Santa Fe.
The Pioneer Tunnel option appears to be a better match to the scientific community’s expectations, said John Wilkerson, a UW physicist who would be among the scientists conducting research in the underground lab.
There currently are underground laboratories operating in Europe, Japan and Canada, he said, but the next generation of experiments will require a deeper environment than many of those labs can provide. A broad coalition of scientists has advocated for a Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory to be built in the United States so that U.S. scientists will not have to travel overseas to conduct their research.
“We can get underground quickly by using an existing tunnel,” Wilkerson said. “Without any new tunnel construction, we can produce a laboratory deeper than the Japanese National Underground Laboratory, and the Pioneer Tunnel site can be deepened in stages.”
He noted that Canada is expected to complete construction next year on an underground laboratory 6,800 feet deep in a nickel mine near Sudbury, Ontario. That lab is an expansion of the existing Sudbury Neutrino Observatory.
“The staging possibilities at the Pioneer Tunnel site will allow us to work cooperatively with the Canadians,” Wilkerson said. “We could add new underground space as scientists from Canada and the United States agree it is needed.”
Wick Haxton, a UW physicist who has led the effort to locate the Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory in Washington, said the Pioneer Tunnel site should alleviate public concerns about the logistics of building an underground laboratory.
“The Pioneer Tunnel reduces construction, has a nearby railway for carting away excavated rock and is known to be dry,” Haxton said. “The progress we have made on this site during the last year has made it our favorite.”
