This article is excerpted from the Fermilab article Contract to design rock conveyor for neutrino experiment awarded of 5 July, 2017.
If in a few years you happen to travel down Highway 85 in the Black Hills near Lead, South Dakota, you will find yourself passing beneath a new, narrow beam-like structure stretching across the road overhead.
You’ll be crossing under part of a conveyor system that will be used to transport rock from nearly a mile underground at the former Homestake gold mine — now the Sanford Underground Research Facility — to an enormous open pit on the surface as underground space is carved out to house (the DUNE far) detector…
On June 28, Fermi Research Alliance LLC, which operates Fermilab, signed a contract with North Alabama Fabricating Company to design and fabricate the pipe conveyor to be installed at Sanford Lab. The contract supports the excavation for the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF), the facility that will house and support DUNE…
Fermilab and Sanford Lab staff expect conveyor installation to begin in mid-2018 and continue for six months. Rock removal is expected to take about three years once the conveyor begins operating…
“The conveyor will transport 875,000 tons of rock — approximately equal to the mass of eight Nimitz class aircraft carriers,” said retired U.S. Navy admiral Chris Mossey, who is now the LBNF project director at Fermilab…