Assay and Acquisition of Radiopure Materials

This proposal, from the University of Minnesota, requests funds for the design of a Facility for the Assay and Acquisition of Radio pure Materials (or FAARM), which is to include a dedicated, water-shielded room located at the 4850 ft. level, housed in a standard lab module (20m by 20m by 50 to 75m).

The award, through a Cooperative Agreement, will fund the University of Minnesota in Twin Cities and collaborators to produce a Preliminary Design for such a facility to be constructed at DUSEL for experiments requiring extremely low backgrounds. Assay and acquisition of radio pure materials is essential to the success of a wide range of experiments at DUSEL, which therefore must include a low background counting facility. This work is inherently broad in impact, in that it creates screening infrastructure for use by both the rare event search community, as well as other scientific fields - many of general interest, such as national security, archaeology, public health, and environmental monitoring. Also, it will provide training of scientists in radiation-detection technologies and low-background techniques, which supplement the country's technical intelligence base, both inside and outside physics.