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This Staff Memorandum analyzes aspects of the economic spinoffs from previous particle accelerator efforts and outlines the current budgetary and fiscal potential of alternative sources of financing for the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) in the United States. The first section reviews a study published by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) on the economic and commercial spinoffs of their particle accelerator program in Geneva, Switzerland. (CERN is the major European Community scientific competitor of the U.S. high-energy physics program.) The section outlines CERN's methodology and conclusions and discusses the applicability of the study to U.S. circumstances.
The second and third sections of the memorandum discuss alternative sources of funds for the U.S. particle accelerator program. The second section focuses on the costs to state governments of contributing to the SSC and places these costs in the context of the states' current indebtedness and their current revenue-raising efforts. (The section does not address the question of the appropriateness or the desirability of a formal state contribution or the precedent such an action might set. Nor does the section address the question of how much weight, if any, the Congress might wish to place on the willingness of any individual state to contribute in the site selection process now underway.1) The third section looks at potential foreign donors to see how the SSC might fit into their high-energy physics budgets.
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1. The Congress instructed the U.S. Department of Energy not to consider financial incentives in its site selection process.