One place where South Dakota keeps beating Minnesota is the Homestake Sanford Lab. In 2007, the National Science Foundation picked the old gold mine at Lead over the Soudan Mine in northern Minnesota for the Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory. We won then on depth (Soudan goes down 2,341 feet; Homestake, 4,850 and 7,400, which means a lot less interference from cosmic radiation) and local support (i.e., Denny Sanford and state cash). NSF scaled DUSEL down in 2011, but now another NSF-funded project, the Dual Ion Accelerator for Nuclear Astrophysics, may come keep the Homestake Lab in business for decades:
A $30 million to $50 million experiment that scientists plan to operate for several decades has selected the Sanford Lab as its site.
The DIANA (Dual Ion Accelerator for Nuclear Astrophysics) experiment seeks to simulate nuclear reactions that take place within stars, in order to understand how these reactions produce all of the natural elements observed in our universe.
For months, DIANA scientists have been examining potential underground sites at the Sanford Underground Research Facility, the Soudan Mine in Minnesota and at the Kimballton Mine in Virginia. DIANA spokesman Dr. Michael Weischer, from the University of Notre Dame, said the selection was based on a number of criteria, including cost efficiency, local support, accessibility, and other major factors. When making the site selection, he said local support and cost efficiency were the factors that were strongest at the Sanford Lab [Wendy Pitlick, "Sanford Lab Selected!" Black Hills Pioneer, 2013.05.18].
Lab director Michael Headley says construction could begin in 2015. We could start smashing atoms before the end of the decade and keep going for 20 to 30 years.
But pay attention, budget hawks:
However, Headley was also careful to point out that federal funding for final design and construction of the experiment has not yet been approved. Weischer confirmed this, saying his collaboration is anxiously awaiting a federal budget approval, in hopes that they will be allowed to move forward with the research [Pitlick, 2013.05.18].
That sounds like a shout-out to Senator Thune and Representative Noem: Washington does have a spending problem, and that's not spending enough on science and South Dakota. If we want this victory over Minnesota to stick, we need our Congresspeople to fill in the blank on that science budget line.
The Sanford Lab has been regarded as having incomparable potential for underground science experiments since it was the Homestake Mine and had the near-unanimous support of scientists working in physics, geology, and the related disciplines. When Barrick Gold shut off the pumps and let the mine fill with water, those scientists quickly turned their attention to finding alternative places to conduct their underground experiments.
The National Science Foundation was the lead agency in promoting and finally selecting the Homestake as the site for a national Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory. But after it lost the general support of the working scientists and the state attempted to revive it as an economic development project, the Science Board, the governing committee of the NSF, withdrew all support and severed its connection to the Sanford Lab, stating that its purpose and governance no longer met the criteria for NSF funding and participation. In withdrawing, it turned over federal responsibilities, meaning funding, to the Department of Energy.
With the selection of the Sanford Lab for the DIANA project, the NSF will have to be pulled back into participation in the functioning of the lab, as DIANA is an NSF project. The key figures are Michael Headley, who is respected and influential within the scientific community, and Kevin Lesko, who has been involved in the development of the Homestake into a DUSEL from the outset and who has continually emphasized the incomparable potential of the old gold mine.
The DIANA project is a good opportunity for regaining the status of the Sanford Lab as a research facility for pure science, providing the state can grasp the concept and not screw it up again.
Barrick got a lot of mineral rights for next to nothing from Bush Senior administration. Chairman Monk put Bush on his board of directors soon after Bush was replaced as President. Sen. Daschle had gotten something like $10 million into SD funds for development. Had Homestake been turned into a research golden goose then, Daschle would have stomped Thune into the dirt. Barrick was just doing the bidding of the old Bush team. South Dakota newspapers have refused to cover this.
Let's mooch more off the feds, eh? Thought you didn't like that, Cory.
More seriously: We ought to keep in mind the distinction between spending and investment.
Of course, if they put money into something I like, then it constitutes an investment. Otherwise it's mere spending.
I happen to like that lab! So does almost everybody else here in Lead.
That lab is a good thing, Stan. But we need to remind people that it is an excellent example of investment that doesn't happen without our working together as a community through government.
ping:
http://rapidcityjournal.com/news/suicide-by-young-physicist-shocks-community/article_4d504a34-6d14-5f45-9087-a8159958eff6.html