Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, June 1, 1990                   TAG: 9006010199
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: TOKYO                                LENGTH: Medium

U.S. SEEKS JAPAN'S AID ON COLLIDER

The request came as a delegation of American officials and scientists arrived here in an effort to build international support for a project that is as controversial in Japan as it is in the United States.

But Japanese political analysts say they expect the government of Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu to join the project, though perhaps at a level far lower than the United States is soliciting, in an effort to alleviate growing tensions between the two countries over technology.

If funds are forthcoming from Congress and foreign sources, the giant $8 billion particle accelerator will be housed in a 54-mile-long tunnel in Texas, hurling beams of protons around an elliptical course to create collisions at tremendous energy levels.

Congress would contribute $5 billion and Texas $1 billion, and the rest is to come from other countries.

Physicists have promoted the project, a symbol of the "big science" projects the Bush administration is promoting, as a way to understand the fundamental forces that created the universe and the interactions of the subatomic particles in all matter.

In Japan, as in the United States, the project has run into opponents. The Japanese critics say it is a waste of money or a drain from several big projects, including a collider of radically different design that Japan is considering on its own.

The request also comes amid complaints from American corporate executives and members of Congress that Japan has acted as a sponge for technologies developed in the United States, but contributes relatively little basic research of its own.

Japan, meanwhile, has come to resent its exclusion from American projects in computer chip making, and believes it has been relegated to a junior role in projects like the proposed $30 billion space station. The United States, Japanese scientists often say, seeks Japan's help only when it is considering projects it cannot afford on its own.

"They are not interested in merely being a checkbook. But we want them to see themselves as our largest major partner in this project," W. Henson Moore, deputy secretary of energy, said in an interview here Thursday morning.

Moore is offering Japan seats on the committees that will govern the supercollider's construction and decide how it will be used.

It will probably take Japan a year or more to decide whether it will join the project and under what terms.

The only other "big science" project that Japan has joined with the United States is the space station. Japan is building a large cylindrical laboratory for space experiments that would be a major part of the station.

For the supercollider, the United States is approaching Japan first - and Korea next week - in part because it has little prospect of winning contributions to the American project in Europe.

The European Community's synchrotron collider project, called CERN, has been in operation near Geneva since last year. As a result, Europe is expected to react coolly to American approaches to join the new project.