国内英语新闻：Construction of neutrino experimental facility begins

SHENZHEN -- Construction began Saturday on an experimental facility which will offer a platform for Chinese and foreign scientists to work together for discovering a new kind of neutrino oscillation in Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong Province.

It was the second biggest cooperation program Chinese high energy scientists ever conducted with other foreign counterparts since October 1988 when the positive-negative electron collider was built in Beijing.

Through the collider, scientists from China and the United States have cooperated and carried out legions of scientific research.

Saturday's construction commencement function was attended by more than 100 people, including government officials and foreign diplomats, such as Dr. Robin Staffin, Associate Director of Science in the US Department of Energy.

Neutrino Oscillation is an intriguing behavior of a sub-atomic particle called neutrino.

And the new facility is being built in the mountain near Daya Nuclear Power Plant, which has four reactors with a combined thermal output of 11.6 million kw in operation, and Ling'ao nuclear power plant is not far away. Both nuke power plants will serve as sources of anti-neutrinos for the experiments when the facility is finished.

Workers will build three underground experimental halls which will be connected by long tunnels in the mountain that shields the experiment from unwanted cosmic radiation.

Each hall will feature a 10-m deep water-pool within which eight anti-neutrino detectors will be deployed. The water protects the detectors from nearby radiation that interferes with the measurement, and helps identify surviving cosmic radiation.

And the first experimental hall is expected to be ready by the end of 2008. Commissioning of the detectors in this hall will take place in 2009.

Civil engineering construction is anticipated to last about two years, with installation of the last detector scheduled for 2010.

Upon completion of the new facility, more than 190 scientists from six countries and regions including the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, Taiwan Province, the United States and Russia will come over to do research work, according to Chen Hesheng, Chief of the Institute of High Energy Physics with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

The facility will have a budget of 250 million yuan (US$31.25 million). And China will be responsible for infrastructure construction and making of four detectors. And the United States will be responsible for making of the rest of the detectors.

Wang Yifang, chief scientist on the experiment, said he was confident that the program would make an important contribution to finding a new breakthrough in China's research efforts in particle physics, starting a new horizon in world's neutrino research, and to improving the overall strength of China in science and technology.