FRIB Could Energize Michigan's Economy

The U.S. Department of Energy is looking to build a $550 million Facility for Rare Isotope Beams and MSU is a top contender for the site.  If awarded the project, it is estimated that it could bring $1 billion in economic activity to the state as well as 400 new jobs over the next ten years.

MSU has a long history as a leader in physics research.  According to U.S. News and World Report, the university ranks second only to MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) for its nuclear physics graduate program.  Ten percent of the nation's PhD's in nuclear science are educated at MSU.

The Spartan campus became home to the world's first nuclear science superconducting cyclotron back in 1981, which catapulted the program.  Today, according to an August 2007 task force of the Nuclear Science Advisory Committee, the MSU lab is "the nation's premier rare-isotope facility".  At the current facility, scientists use the cyclotrons to accelerate stable atomic nuclei to about half the speed of light, smashing them, and eventually creating a number of reaction products, including rare isotopes.

Studying rare isotopes gives scientists an expanded understanding on a broad array of topics including what happens inside stars and how the elements were made.  Practical applications for such research may be as diverse as creating diagnostic equipment for cancer or developing a means to test nuclear weapons without detonation. 

The new technology that would equip the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams would dramatically accelerate the time frames for experiments.  A project that today may take a year to complete at the MSU lab could conceivably take less than a week at the new facility.

The Spartans face stiff competition for the new facility from Arbonne National Laboratory, a federal lab in Illinois.  Arbonne has 2800 employees compared to the 300 that staff the MSU lab and an operational budget of approximately $530 million compared to $20 million from the National Science Foundation for MSU. 

Members of the Department of Energy selection committee will be visiting East Lansing on October 20th and a decision is expected by the end of the year.  If chosen, MSU's new physics lab could bring as much as $187 million in new tax revenue to the state over the next twenty years.  Construction of the state-of-the-art facility would take approximately seven years to complete.