TECHNOLOGY : Japan to Receive New Collider Pitch : Research: President Bush will ask Tokyo for $1.25 billion in equipment for the project. That is a lot less than a request the Japanese turned down.

Energy Secretary James D. Watkins on Wednesday scaled down America’s request for Japanese help in building an $8.2-billion superconducting supercollider project designed for “new frontier” research into basic physics.

Tokyo would contribute about $1.25 billion worth of equipment built in Japan--with no cash involved--if it accepts a request from President Bush when he visits Jan. 7-10, Watkins said. Earlier, the United States reportedly sought several billion dollars, including cash.

Bush plans to ask Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa only to commit Japan to general support of the project “for the longer haul,” with no budgeting of funds before fiscal 1993, Watkins told the Japan National Press Club at a luncheon.

The President, he said, will make the supercollider one of the major items in a U.S.-Japan “global partnership” that the leaders will discuss next month. A commitment from Miyazawa is crucial, Watkins said, because “we are at a critical determining point in our Congress,” and only Miyazawa can pledge “a national commitment” by Japan.

With competition in technology growing between the two nations, Americans have charged that Japan contributes little to basic science but reaps its benefits, producing ever more innovative products.

Japan, Watkins said, should “assume its rightful role as a world leader in basic science as well as applied technology.”

If Miyazawa accepts Bush’s entreaty, Japan would make a “contribution-in-kind” that could be budgeted over seven years beginning in 1993, Watkins said. That contribution, he added, would be “something like the second of two collider (magnet) rings that will make up the bulk of the supercollider.”

Japanese firms would build the magnet ring and ship it to the project site near Dallas, Watkins said. He estimated its cost at about $1.25 billion. In exchange, Watkins said, Japan would be assured “full partnership.”

The project is designed to probe the mysteries of matter through a massive, 56-mile-long collider in which protons, guided by superconducting magnets, crash into each other at nearly the speed of light.

Scientists believe that as particles break apart in the collisions, clues to the fundamental nature of matter will be revealed.

The energy secretary did not describe his appeal for Japanese help as a cutback from earlier requests. Both Japanese officials and scholars, however, have complained about the costs of the project and expressed fears that Congress might not continue its financial support.

A Japanese reporter reminded Watkins that Japan’s $2.5-billion investment in the “Space Station Freedom” project has been endangered several times by congressional refusal to provide funds.

Watkins responded by declaring that American support for the supercollider is firm.