Illinois officials say they could have a leg up on MSU in the competition to secure the nearly $1 billion Rare Isotope Accelerator project.
MSU and Argonne National Laboratory, located near Chicago, are the main competitors for the project. Officials at the University of Chicago say that the proposed 2006 federal budget is tight. By allowing Argonne to host the project, it would save about $100 million, as its laboratory has existing facilities to support the project.
RIA would allow scientists to study rare isotopes not found on Earth and make its host the most technologically advanced institution in nuclear physics.
MSU officials said the university has already received about $7 million in funding for the project, and construction of a new infrastructure at MSU could be more desirable over an older and already existing one.
In early February, Bush allocated $4 million for RIA - $5 million less than was approved by Congress last year.
Thomas Rosenbaum, research vice president at the University of Chicago and for Argonne, was recently quoted by the Chicago Tribune saying that because the budget is tight, the U.S. Department of Energy might decide to forgo a competition and place RIA in Illinois.
Rosenbaum declined to comment further, but Larry Arbeiter, director of communications for the University of Chicago, said Rosenbaum could have been misquoted as saying that a competition could not happen.
But Arbeiter said, even with a competition, putting the project in Illinois would make sense.
"It's sort of the natural place to put it," he said. "We've got a lot of existing infrastructure here."
The Energy Department has long supported the idea of a race to procure RIA, said Howard Gobstein, MSU's associate vice president for governmental affairs in Washington, D.C.
"I would be amazed if the Department of Energy, having strongly endorsed the concept of competition in the selection of the RIA site, would now backtrack and decide to award the site without any competition whatsoever," Gobstein said. "We've heard nothing of the sort."
A competition with Argonne would be beneficial for MSU, he said.
"We'd love to have an opportunity in a real competition ... to have the Department of Energy judge the appropriateness of their existing facilities with the new requirements of RIA," Gobstein said.
The strain from an increased federal budget deficit will most likely cause the project to be delayed. A final request for proposal, or a set of specifications MSU must meet to obtain RIA, might not be ready for months.
The project would bring 1,600 jobs to Michigan.
In Illinois, RIA would create 16,000 construction jobs for seven to eight years and about 1,800 permanent jobs, as well as put $110 million a year into the state's economy, said Andrew Ross, spokesman for the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity.
A competition will bring out the qualities each vying institution has to offer, such as how much it will cost each to construct it, said Konrad Gelbke, director of the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory.
Gelbke said he is confident MSU would be the best choice.
"(MSU has the) best opportunity to train the next generation of scientists," Gelbke said. "We have the best value in the country if costs would be equal."
Lindsay VanHulle can be reached at vanhull3@msu.edu.
