Scientists Await Japan's Word on $7 Billion Linear Collider
- Project billed as world’s most advanced particle physics lab
- Japan official says his country needs to do it before China
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Twenty-five years after particle physicists began studying prospects for a International Linear Collider, Japan is poised to decide whether to pay for half of the $7 billion project and host the 20 kilometer superconducting tunnel in mountains northeast of Tokyo.
Prospective suppliers from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. and Hitachi Ltd. to Thales Group Inc. and Air Liquide SA are awaiting a verdict by the end of this year for the project that could generate as much as 5.7 trillion yen ($50 billion) in economic activity, according to estimates by a business group of Iwate, Japan, where the collider, or ILC, would be built.