$1B project at Brookhaven Lab is ahead of schedule

A nearly $1-billion project to build what will be the world's brightest light - at Brookhaven National Laboratory - is just about halfway completed and slightly ahead of schedule, lab officials said earlier this week.

The scientific, technology and business worlds are eagerly awaiting the completion of the National Synchrotron Light Source II, an X-ray machine that will be the world's brightest light and will let researchers work with objects as small as one-billionth of a meter in such fields as medicine, environmental sciences, biology and physics.

"The construction is going very well," said Marty Fallier, director of conventional facilities at the lab in Upton. "We're approaching a little less than 50 percent complete at this point, with the buildings and utilities." The machine is expected to be completed in 2014.

"We'll be completing the building in stages, so we can install the scientific equipment sooner," Fallier said.

The project has created about 300 construction jobs, and about another 100 will be added as soon as the lab signs another contract for offices in the facility, Fallier said.

Work was speeded up by an infusion of about $150 million in federal stimulus funds, lab officials said.

The X-ray will be 10,000 times stronger than its predecessor, which was also built at Brookhaven lab, in 1982. Lab officials say the X-ray machine will allow researchers to design cars that are able to run on electricity or hydrogen, or to make breakthroughs in exploring cures for AIDS and Alzheimer's disease.

There is no other device in the world like the X-ray being developed, said Steve Dierker, associate lab director of light sources. He said scientists don't know what the X-ray will unveil to them. "We have a gap in our capabilities. This [X-ray machine] will be unique."