National funding agencies join for deep underground lab

The proposed Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory project would unite multiple scientific fields in one underground laboratory. But it already has begun to bring people together, including officials from the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation.

Representatives from DOE and NSF plan by the end of the year to sign a memorandum of understanding formalizing their roles as stewards or participants in various projects in DUSEL's suite of experiments.

The agencies will coordinate and oversee separate lists of experiments. But their roles are interdependent, said Jon Kotcher of DOE's Office of High Engery Physics at the DUSEL users' meeting at Fermilab on Sept. 3.

"We actually participate in one another's reviews by sending observers, for example," Kotcher said. "DOE participates in NSF reviews and vice versa in order to keep abreast of the developments on both sides of the ledger. This helps to bridge that gap, which is actually quite useful."

The project has a solid base of support in Washington and the high-energy physics community, Kotcher said. One of the priorities of DOE's Office of High Energy Physics is to implement a world-class Intensity Frontier program centered on Fermilab. DUSEL also enables pioneering experiments at the Cosmic Frontier and in biosciences, geosciences and engineering.

Members of the DUSEL users' organization impressed Joseph Dehmer of NSF with their enthusiasm for playing a role in the program.

"The activity in this stage exhibits a youthful vigor," he said at the meeting. "I encourage you to enjoy it; it's fairly rare."

DOE's deputy secretary approved the mission need for an experiment using a beam of neutrinos generated at Fermilab, a near detector at Fermilab and a far detector located underground, preferably at the DUSEL site in Lead, S.D. NSF will contribute to the Long Baseline Neutrino Experiment at DUSEL, including possible contributions to the excavations, infrastructure and detector components.

-- Kathryn Grim

Planning for the future of Project X

Last week, about 120 physicists participated in the Project X collaboration meeting at Fermilab. On Sept. 8 and 9, attendees discussed current Project X configuration, general development strategy for Project X and the R&D plan for FY2011-12. Project X is a proposed high-intensity proton accelerator complex that could provide beam for a variety of physics projects. Fermilab hopes Project X will achieve CD-0, the first step in DOE's project approval process, in 2011.

LHC lawsuit case dismissed by US court

From PhysOrg.com, Sept. 13, 2010

A Hawaiian man's lawsuit to try to prevent operations of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has been dismissed due to a failure to show a "credible threat of harm," according to the judge. And, as ruled in 2008, the judge again concluded that the US government is not the correct party to bring the suit against since the US doesn't control LHC operations.

Walter Wagner, a retired nuclear safety officer, along with Spanish journalist Luis Sancho, filed the lawsuit in March 2008 before the LHC was turned on. The LHC, located on the border between France and Switzerland, was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). As a collaboration among thousands of scientists from more than 100 countries, the LHC is the largest and most powerful particle accelerator in the world. After an electrical fault initially shut down the collider when it was first turned on in September 2008, it has been operating successfully since November 2009.

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