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Funding for NSF underground laboratory is rejected

FEB 01, 2011
Citing dissatisfaction with an interagency management model, a National Science Board committee refuses to keep the South Dakota project going.

DOI: 10.1063/1.3554312

The Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory (DUSEL), which proponents hope could provide a niche for the US particle-physics community, faces a shutdown as early as 1 April; the National Science Board (NSB) has rejected $19 million in funding needed to keep the project going through the fall of this year. The lab is housed in a disused gold mine in South Dakota’s Black Hills.

The NSB’s decision could mean layoffs for the 100 state employees working at the former Homestake Mine and an end to NSF-funded scientific collaboration involving 60 individuals. Also this spring, the lab’s preliminary design is due to be submitted to NSF. Some $300 million of DUSEL’s $875 million estimated cost has been spent or committed already, including a $70 million donation from credit-card pioneer and philanthropist T. Denny Sanford. South Dakota, which has named the lab in Sanford’s honor, has pitched in $50 million from its taxpayers, and NSF, which prefers the DUSEL label, has awarded $80 million to the scientific collaboration, headed by Kevin Lesko of the University of California, Berkeley. Another $100 million or so is coming from the US Department of Energy (DOE).

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The Homestake Mine, proposed site of the Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory, was the site of a 1960s neutrino experiment that earned Raymond Davis Jr (shown during the assembly of his detector) a share of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physics.

ANNA DAVIS COLLECTION/SANFORD LABORATORY

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A multidisciplinary laboratory

The DUSEL project would break new ground for NSF, which has traditionally left the task of managing and operating large particle-physics projects to DOE. For DUSEL, NSF would be the operator, in recognition of the underground lab’s multidisciplinary character. Most of the subsurface experiments are expected to explore neutrinos, dark matter, and other physics questions that require an environment shielded from cosmic rays. But geologists and biologists are also expected to flock to the facility to explore rock and mineral properties, seismic phenomena, and exotic life forms, or “extremophiles,” that may be found at DUSEL’s depths of up to 2438 meters. New engineering challenges are expected in the carving out of caverns as tall as 10-story buildings to accommodate the massive particle detectors that are planned.

But the NSB committee on programs and plans (CPP), where the $19 million request landed, balked at the idea of NSF taking on the job of running the new lab, particularly a facility in which DOE has such a major scientific interest. “We just didn’t like the current stewardship model and the way the roles and responsibilities of NSF and DOE and the other partners were partitioned, particularly given the mission of NSF,” says Mark Abbott, an oceanographer at Oregon State University who chairs the CPP. “When you talk about this scope and scale of facilities and infrastructure, that’s not really what NSF does. NSF is a science agency. They need to rethink the appropriate balance between NSF and DOE.”

With DUSEL, NSF and DOE have proposed to share responsibility and funding. But under the novel stewardship arrangement, NSF would play a junior role in the physics experimental program. DOE would have charge of three of the four large physics experiments: long-baseline neutrinos (in conjunction with Fermilab), proton decay, and neutrinoless double beta decay. That leaves dark matter and nuclear astrophysics for NSF to lead. Although their division of responsibilities was blessed by both the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the NSB is worried that NSF won’t be getting its money’s worth out of the science that will come from DUSEL, according to former NSB member Barry Barish. Moreover, board members are concerned that adding to NSF’s growing portfolio of large scientific projects will eat into funding available for the individual investigator-initiated grants that are the agency’s bread and butter.

A depleted NSB membership

“What I hear [from the CPP] is that NSF is digging a big hole and DOE is doing most of the science,” said Barish, a Caltech physicist who remains a consultant to the NSB. At the behest of Abbott and NSB chairman Ray Bowen, Barish briefed the inaugural meeting of a newly formed National Research Council committee that NSF and DOE commissioned to review DUSEL’s scientific merit. The committee had been in the works long before the NSB’s funding rejection, but the review has gained new importance in light of that decision. Of further concern to the CPP, said Barish, is the high proportion of DUSEL’s total estimated cost that will be needed for infrastructure and upkeep; only about one-third will go to research. For DOE’s large physics facilities, that ratio has historically been closer to 50–50, he said.

As 1 of 10 NSB holdovers who have continued as consultants after their terms expired in May 2010, Barish participates in CPP discussions but isn’t entitled to vote, says Abbott. The unusual arrangement is a consequence of the White House’s failure to send nominations for their replacements to the Senate, which must confirm them. As in the Senate, NSB members serve staggered six-year terms, and one-third rotate off every two years.

Joseph Dehmer, director of NSF’s physics division, called the idea that DOE will get the majority of DUSEL’s scientific benefits “a misunderstanding” and “a communications failure.” The stewardship model is “a management tool” that has been used for other projects that are cofunded. “It’s how we do nuclear and particle physics,” he said. Both agencies would contribute to every physics experiment at DUSEL, he noted.

As PHYSICS TODAY went to press, UCB’s Lesko says he has no new information on his project’s funding status. Abbott says the CPP would reconsider the funding if the agencies restructure the arrangement, but he warns that tweaking the current plan won’t do. South Dakota officials, meanwhile, have been trying to line up some initial physics experiments to get under way this year at DUSEL’s 1478-meter experimental hall, the spot where Raymond Davis Jr in 1965 installed a neutrino detector that earned him a share of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2002. A spokesman for the South Dakota Science and Technology Authority says the state can keep the project going into the late spring or early summer, but adds that as owner, the state has always had a closure plan in place.

More about the Authors

David Kramer. dkramer@aip.org

This Content Appeared In
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Volume 64, Number 2

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