ILC Cost Estimate

The Reference Design Report for the ILC has just been released this afternoon in Beijing, China. For the first time the design committee released a "preliminary value estimate" of the cost for the ILC in its present design.

- 1.8 Billion ILC Value Units for site-related costs, such as the costs for tunnelling in a specific region,
- 4.9 Billion ILC Value Units for the value of the high technology and conventional components;
- Approximately 2,000 persons per year or 13,000 person-years for the required supporting manpower (= 22 million person-hours)

Here one ILC Value Unit is equal to $USD1 or about JPY117, so that will come in at about $7b to $8b for the whole project. At one stage some people in the loop were guestimating about $11b, so this estimate sounds a little bit on the cheap side. I hope they can pull it off.

This cost estimate will now have a big effect on the site selection process over the next couple of years, and also on the decision on whether or not to upgrade the Belle experiment and build a Super B factory here at KEK. It will be interesting to get everyone elses reactions here at Belle, although I have a fairly good idea what some of them will be saying already.

Update : The reports are now available for download on the web at the ILC site. The full report [PDF] and a two page outline of the cost estimation [PDF] can be found on the site.

It turns out the above estimate does not include the tunnels for the 1000 GeV Stage Two Upgrade, or the funding to construct the detectors, "which are assumed to be funded by a seperate agreement." This will probably bump the cost up to $8b to $9b for the 500 GeV Stage 1 project, excluding the costs for land aquisition.