South Dakota Governor's Office of Economic Development

Final four lab sites hope to slam dunk DUSEL

By Bill Harlan, Journal Staff Writer

It’s all over but the waiting -- at least for this important round in the quest to become the site of a national underground laboratory.
The National Science Foundation is considering four underground sites, including the Homestake gold mine in Lead, which was closed in 2001 and sealed up in 2003.
The stakes are high for science.

At least three blue-ribbon committees of scientists have declared a “Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory,” or DUSEL, a national priority.
Deep labs protect sensitive experiments from background cosmic radiation. It’s important work, especially for physicists, who use deep labs to measure the most elusive of subatomic interactions. They include arcane phenomena such as neutrino oscillations, proton decay, double beta decay and the secret, yet-to-be observed comings and goings of “weakly interacting massive particles,” or WIMPs.

WIMPs, if ever observed, might illuminate the mysteries of so-called “dark matter.” Other experiments might tell physicists what happened to all the universe’s anti-matter, which is mostly missing in action.

This is pure science that probes the most basic questions:
-What is the universe made of?
-How did the universe begin?
-How might it end?

Unfortunately for U.S. scientists, the biggest, deepest underground labs now are in Japan, Canada and Italy.

That’s why the National Science Foundation has agreed to consider proposals to build a DUSEL, which could cost $300 million or more.

DUSEL also could be important to local communities. It’s hard to predict exactly what a lab would look like n those decisions are years away, and the National Science Board, the White House and Congress will each have a say n but national laboratories typically employ hundreds of workers and attract experiments worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
There’s no guarantee a DUSEL would do that, but Gov. Mike Rounds, the South Dakota Legislature, the state’s congressional delegation and Sioux Falls philanthropist Denny Sanford have put together a $115 million package of incentives to make Homestake more attractive.

But the competition is tough. The three other sites are:
-The Henderson molybdenum mine, still operating near Empire, Colo.
-The University of Minnesota’s Soudan Underground Laboratory, already doing science in a closed iron mine in the north woods.
-The Pioneer railroad tunnel (now closed) east of Seattle, proposed by the University of Washington.
Last year the NSF “downselected” Henderson and Homestake into a “final two,” but objections from the University of Washington put Soudan and the Pioneer Tunnel back in the race.

Written proposals for all four sites were submitted in January.

NSF experts visited each site in March.

Supporters of each site made presentations at NSF headquarters in Arlington, Va., in April.

Now the NSF is deciding which site will get up to $15 million over the next three years to develop a more detailed plan.

That decision could come this month or next month n probably by the end of June, though the NSF is not an agency to be rushed.

Over the next four days the Rapid City Journal will profile each site. Selection of Homestake wouldn’t mean DUSEL is a slam dunk, and rejection wouldn’t necessarily be the end of the line.

But the NSF decision coming soon could have a profound impact on Lead, the Northern Hills and the Black Hills Region.