Environmental assessment -- Proposed neutrino beams at the Main Injector project

The US Department of Energy (DOE) proposes to build a beamline on the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) site to accommodate an experimental research program in neutrino physics. The proposed action, called Neutrino Beams at the Main Injector (NuMI), is to design, construct, operate and decommission a facility for producing and studying a high flux beam of neutrinos in the energy range of 1 to 40 GeV (1 GeV is one billion or 109 electron volts). The proposed facility would initially be dedicated to two experiments, COSMOS (Cosmologically Significant Mass Oscillations) and MINOS (Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search). The neutrino beam would pass underground from Fermilab to northern Minnesota. A tunnel would not be built in this intervening region because the neutrinos easily pass through the earth, not interacting, similar to the way that light passes through a pane of glass. The beam is pointed towards the MINOS detector in the Soudan Underground Laboratory in Minnesota. Thus, the proposed project also includes construction, operation and decommissioning of the facility located in the Soudan Underground Laboratory in Minnesota that houses this MINOS detector. This environmental assessment (EA) has been prepared by the US Department of Energy (DOE) in accordance with the DOE's National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) Implementing Procedures (10 CFR 1021). This EA documents DOE's evaluation of potential environmental impacts associated with the proposed construction and operation of NuMI at Fermilab and its far detector facility located in the Soudan Underground Laboratory in Minnesota. Any future use of the facilities on the Fermilab site would require the administrative approval of the Director of Fermilab and would undergo a separate NEPA review. Fermilab is a Federal high-energy physics research laboratory in Batavia, Illinois operated on behalf of the DOE by Universities Research Association, Inc