Project Cost

ISF construction will build upon the strength and expertise of NSCL faculty and staff and utilize NSCL equipment (extant and under construction) to achieve major cost savings. The proposed site is a new location on the MSU south campus, which offers an unconstrained and fully optimized facility layout with ample space for future science-driven upgrades. Transition from CCF operation to ISF operation can be accomplished with about six months disruption of the ongoing experimental program.

The construction cost in fiscal year 2006 dollars is slightly less than $500 million. A less favored alternative of building the ISF on the current NSCL site would reduce the cost by roughly 20%, but would require significant sacrifices to the current research program.

A standard cost estimating approach similar to that used for the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and the particle physics detector ATLAS at CERN was used to provide a uniform methodology for determining costs.

The information necessary to reliably estimate the cost of this facility has steadily improved over the past six years. R&D programs have been instituted to build and test prototypical system elements. For example, superconducting cavities in a cryomodule configuration including the necessary power sources and electronics have been fabricated and tested, thereby establishing the cost and performance parameters.

Dowload the project cost estimate (PDF 2.2 MByte).