Senator Warner announced today that the Department of Energy will release $75 million from the economic recovery package for labratory improvements at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News.  

Approximately $65 million will accelerate construction of the 12-Billion Electron Volt upgrade project at the facility, creating about 150 local jobs and providing an international community of physicists with a cutting-edge facility for studying quarks -- the basic building blocks of the visible universe. 

Jefferson Lab is a world-leading nuclear physics research laboratory devoted to the study of the building blocks of matter -- quarks and gluons. This upgrade will double the energy of the lab’s electron beam from 6 billion electron volts (GeV) to 12 GeV.

An additional $10 million in funds will be used for needed infrastructure improvements at the facility.

Senator Warner said today:

“These investments will create local construction jobs while also strengthening our nation’s overall scientific infrastructure. The doubling of the electron beam energy at JLab will open the opportunity for exciting new discoveries in the field of modern physics.”

The DOE’s Office of Science projects are among the first to meet the legislation’s criteria for Recovery Act spending: promoting rapid job creation, renewing local economies, improving and modernizing the nation’s infrastructure, accelerating research on renewable energy, and improving America’s competitiveness by strengthening American science.

The DOE Office of Science is the nation’s leading sponsor of basic research in the physical sciences, is the steward of 10 of DOE’s 17 national laboratories, and also supports researchers at more than 300 colleges and universities nationwide.