IN BRIEF : 16 Firms Get Super Collider Work

The Energy Department has picked 16 companies to work on the preliminary stages of producing magnets for its giant Superconducting Super Collider, the Energy Department said today.

Nine of them are foreign companies, either alone or in partnership with U.S. firms, reflecting the department’s hopes to attract foreign support for the $5-billion atom smasher, the world’s largest.

The super collider, to be built near Dallas, will be in a tunnel 53 miles long and 10 feet wide. Industry will pay its own costs in this first phase of the project, which will take place next year, officials said.

The companies are: Alsthom of France; Asea Brown Boveri Technology Co., New Jersey, a unit of the Swedish-Swiss firm; Babcock and Wilcox of Virginia; Elin-Union of Austria; Fuji Electric Co of Japan; General Atomics of California teamed with Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd. of Japan; General Dynamics, Space Systems Division of California; General Electric Co.’s Magnet Systems Division of South Carolina; General Motors Corp.; Grumman Corp. teamed with Italy’s Ansaldo; Hitachi teamed with Mitsubishi Electric; Interatom and Siemens of West Germany; Intermagnetics General of New York; Kobe Steel Ltd., Japan; Noell, West Germany; and Westinghouse Electric Corp.