Funding for DUSEL, a US underground lab, rejected

Nature : The National Science Board has refused to continue to fund the design of the Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory (DUSEL), which is expected to be built in the former Homestake gold mine near Lead, South Dakota, at an eventual cost of $800 million$900 million, writes Eugenie Samuel Reich for Nature. Because of the mine’s depth, it is the perfect location for a range of sensitive experiments to search for hard-to-detect particles such as neutrinos and dark matter. Building the lab would allow the US to compete effectively with other countries that have underground facilities, such as the Super-Kamiokande neutrino observatory near Hida, Japan; Gran Sasso National Laboratory near L’Aquila, Italy; and the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory in Canada. “Here in the United States we are conspicuous in not having a deep underground science lab, in contrast to other countries with large science programs,” says Brown University’s Rick Gaitskell, a particle astrophysicist who hopes to use DUSEL.The board’s decision reflected differences of opinion concerning the NSF’s and the Department of Energy’s roles in DUSEL; board members felt that DOE should be contributing more.