California Bid for Collider Rejected : State Is Not Listed Among Eight in Running for $4.4-Billion Project

The National Academy of Sciences said Tuesday it has recommended sites in eight states--none of them in California--as finalists in the nationwide competition for the $4.4-billion superconducting super collider, a particle accelerator that would be the largest scientific instrument ever built.

Prompted by leaks from two members of Congress, Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) and Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.), the academy confirmed Tuesday that it has formally recommended to the Department of Energy eight “best qualified sites” in Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.

If Congress authorizes funds for the accelerator, it would be built and run by the Department of Energy. Its approval is by no means assured, however, and some congressmen said Tuesday that California’s absence among the finalists--with 45 California votes in the House--would not improve its prospects.

Financing Problem

“We’re going to have difficulty funding the super collider wherever it goes,” said Rep. Vic Fazio, a Sacramento Democrat who has led efforts by California’s House delegation to win approval for the project.

With most of the competing states now out of the running, Fazio said, “There’s going to be the usual reluctance you get when somebody else gets the prize. This is going to be compounded by the budget restrictions on research and education in general.”

Congress appropriated only $25 million of the $35 million the Administration requested for the civilian collider project in fiscal 1988, but none of it is designated for construction.

The Energy Department is to select a single “preferred” site by July and a “final” site in January, 1989, after preparing an environmental impact statement. This timing leaves it to the next President to determine whether the super collider actually will be built, and if so, when and where.

The accelerator would consist of an oval tunnel 53 miles in circumference, to be excavated at least 35 feet underground. Ten thousand superconducting magnets lining the 10-foot-wide tunnel would accelerate counter-rotating beams of protons that would collide with an energy of 40 trillion electron volts, or 20 times the energy achievable with existing machines.

The resulting showers of sub-atomic particles, mapped and measured in detectors that may weigh as much as 40,000 tons, are expected to shed new light on the basic relations between energy and matter.

Intense Competition

Endorsed in January by President Reagan as a means for preserving American leadership in high-energy physics into the 21st Century, the collider project--and its promise of 2,500 permanent jobs, a $250-million annual operating budget and worldwide prestige--has sparked intense competition among state governments and congressional delegations. A number of states, including California, mounted sophisticated lobbying efforts and offered the government hundreds of millions of dollars in financial incentives.

The elimination of California from the list of finalists came as a particularly bitter disappointment to state officials, who believed that two 16,000-acre sites proposed near Davis in Northern California and Stockton in the Central Valley were among the strongest contenders in a field of 35 sites put forward by 25 states.

The academy’s 62-page report offered no specific explanation for sites that were rejected, but dwelt instead on the relative merits and weaknesses of the eight it designated as “best-qualified.” Although several small groups of California farmers had begun organizing opposition to the project, there was no indication that their protests influenced the academy.

A one-page discussion of the sites that were not recommended observed that “a number displayed unfavorable geological conditions” such as the risk of earthquake damage and excessive ground water. Others, it said, lacked nearby community services, an adequate base of technical skills or amenities such as easy access to a major airport.

Prominent Membership

The report was prepared by the National Academy of Sciences in cooperation with the National Academy of Engineering at the request of the Energy Department. The committee of 21 prominent scientists, educators and industrial managers, who said in a preface that their list of eight recommended sites “represents the best collective judgment of 21 individuals, carefully chosen for their expertise and impartiality.”

The committee was headed by Edward A. Frieman, director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography and chancellor of marine science at the University of California, San Diego, who was one of six Californians on the committee.

In commissioning the academy, the government’s oldest and most prestigious source of independent scientific advice, Energy Secretary John S. Herrington said in February that he wanted to avoid the intrusion of political considerations in selecting a site and to follow procedures that are “fair, equitable to all parties (and) absolutely open and above-board.”

Reports of the committee’s recommendations, however, emerged first from Helms, whose home state of North Carolina was among the eight semi-finalists. Gramm, whose home state of Texas was also on the list, followed an hour later with a news conference in which he attributed his information to Herrington.

‘Technical Merit’

“We’re talking about a decision that was made only on technical merit,” Gramm said, and added that sites included in the academy’s recommendation were “technically superior” to others, although he did not know why California’s in particular had been eliminated.

Flustered academy officials at first refused to comment on the disclosures, then, after consulting with the Department of Energy, hastily released photocopies of the report, which it said had been sent to Herrington on Thursday.

A spokeswoman at the Department of Energy, Gail Bradshaw, said the department has already begun reviewing the academy’s recommendations. “We have no reason to think that the academy did not follow the (selection) criteria we set out for them,” she said. “But we have a responsibility to make sure they did.”

In its report, the academy committee said it was not able to find a purely objective way of judging proposed sites against the Energy Department’s 19 criteria, nor did it have time to visit any of the sites. It was also not possible, the report said, to independently verify the merits of sites as they were outlined by the 25 states.

Among members of Congress, Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.) said the project’s backers clearly face a long struggle for money.

“I think the collider has a real problem in Congress because too many of my colleagues view this as a massive public works project rather than a major scientific initiative,” Boehlert told the Associated Press.