New GAO Report Examines SSC Cost and Benefits
In response to a March 5 request from Sen. John Warner (R-Virginia), the General Accounting Office (GAO) has produced yet another report on the Superconducting Super Collider. Entitled “Super Collider - National Security Benefits, Similar Projects, and Cost,” the 20-page document responds to Warner’s queries about the SSC’s total cost, its uniqueness, and any potential benefits to national security. Since the project began, the GAO has issued numerous reports warning of increasing costs. The current report, while admitting to the project’s importance to the field of high energy physics, nevertheless continues to be skeptical of its cost and schedule.
On the issue of national security, the GAO reports that “The principal result of high energy physics is fundamental knowledge about matter and energy; therefore, the SSC will not produce any direct national security benefits.” However, the report concedes the potential that research discoveries or technological spin-offs might be of use in national security. It also points to the support provided to the “defense-oriented industrial firms” involved in the construction of the facility and its superconducting magnets.
The report states that while the Tevatron at Fermilab is currently the world’s largest proton accelerator, “a higher energy accelerator is needed to examine smaller particles and further the understanding of physics.” The SSC’s closest competitor would be the proposed LHC, or Large Hadron Collider, to be built by CERN. At approximately one-third the SSC’s size and energy, the LHC is expected to cost less because it would be built in an existing tunnel, but its construction has not yet been approved. According to the GAO, “the higher energy of the SSC would give it the potential to find things that the LHC at its lower energy would not be able to find.”
The GAO’s cost estimates for the SSC continue to rise. “While the total estimated cost for constructing the SSC is not yet known,” the report says, “it is expected to exceed $11 billion.” The report frequently cites a February GAO document which claimed that the project is over budget and behind schedule, and that DOE lacks a reliable cost and schedule projection. Since February, the Clinton Administration has made a decision to stretch out completion of the project and reduce its annual funding. The GAO estimates that “stretching out the project will further increase the total cost of constructing the SSC by at least another $1.6 billion.” The report warns that “If the annual funding continues to be constrained after fiscal year 1997 to the level projected in the President’s budget for fiscal years 1995 through 1997, costs might increase indefinitely, and the project may never be completed.”
The report, GAO #RCED-93-158, can be ordered from GAO at 202-512-6000. There is no charge for a single copy.
