NEWPORT NEWS, Va. - The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility will hold a groundbreaking on Sept. 1 to inaugurate the construction phase of its new $73.2 million Technology and Engineering Development Facility, or TEDF.
EwingCole, based in Philadelphia, Penn., designed the state-of-the-art facility, that will bring together scientists, engineers and technologists focused on research in the areas of nuclear physics, accelerator science, applied nuclear science and technology, and advanced superconducting radiofrequency instrumentation.
Mortenson Construction, based in Minneapolis, Minn., has been chosen as the construction manager and general contractor for pre-construction services and to build the 70,000-square-foot Technology and Engineering Development building and a 30,000-square-foot addition to the existing, adjacent Test Lab building. Included in the construction contract is the modernization of the 96,000-square-foot Test Lab, a structure built in the mid-1960s to house NASA's Space Radiation Effects Laboratory. The Test Lab currently is occupied by Jefferson Lab's Superconducting Radiofrequency Institute and the Center for Injectors and provides space for large physics-experiment detector systems.
Jefferson Lab estimates that the project will provide construction or construction-support jobs for nearly 500 people in the area. Additionally, it estimates that about 75 percent of the $54 million construction cost will be spent directly with local and regional contractors and suppliers. Site preparation began in April, ahead of the building construction contract.
Construction for the new building and the Test Lab addition is expected to begin in September and be completed by the end of 2011. The Test Lab renovation should be done by the end of 2012.
The TEDF was designed to achieve Leadership in Energy and Efficiency Design (LEED) Gold Certification, according to Rusty Sprouse, manager of Jefferson Lab's Facilities Management and Logistics group. To obtain a LEED certification, Jefferson Lab has minimized the amount of green space being used, thus limiting the number of trees that were cut down. The HVAC system will be 30 percent more efficient than industry-standard units. The work environment will include natural light, views to the exterior and exterior landscaping. And the materials used to furnish the facility will have high recycled content and low volatile organic compounds.
Features of the new facility will include a state-of-the-art 6,000-square-foot clean room that will be used for processing and preparing particle accelerator system components and three assembly lines for producing cryomodules (particle accelerating systems). The layout of the new facility will streamline the flow for testing, processing and assembling R&D and production accelerator systems. The new facility also consolidates the work space of design and engineering groups for the many disciplines required to develop and maintain the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility, Jefferson Lab’s flagship research accelerator, and to contribute to new facilities elsewhere.
The TEDF is being funded by the DOE Office of Science.
The Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab) is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science with strong support from the City of Newport News and the Commonwealth of Virginia. As a user facility for scientists worldwide, its primary mission is to conduct basic research of the atom's nucleus at the quark level.