Department of Energy Secretary John Herrington’s tentative decision was announced Thursday that the $4.4 billion Superconducting Super Collider will be constructed in Texas, and officials from competing states have voiced their strong opposition.

The SSC is a 53-mile underground tunnel capable of whipping proton beams into each other with 20 times the force of the world’s most powerful existing particle accelerator, the Tevatron at Fermilab, located in Batavia.

Five states besides Texas and Illinois have been in contention for location of the super collider: Michigan, Arizona, Colorado, North Carolina and Tennessee. Herrington will announce the final, official site in January.

NIU President John LaTourette said, “Texas is to be congratulated on winning the SSC sweepstakes although it’s a tremendous blow to Illinois’ pride and our future economy.

“More than ever before, it’s clearly time for our political leaders to work together to capitalize on Northern Illinois’ resources and dynamic growth and to lay aside political differences,” LaTourette said.

Gov. James Thompson said, “We are understandably disappointed with the decision, but Illinois already has received tremendous benefits for our SSC application.”

State Rep. John Countryman, R-DeKalb, said, “It’s certainly a great loss to us by not having that economic boom. There is a lot of political clout with Texas, but I expected the DOE to go with Illinois.”

He said that because House of Representatives Speaker Jim Wright is from Texas and Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Lloyd Bentsen will be returning to Texas, the state is “assured funding” for the super collider.

“The Texas decision has a strong smell of White House politics,” said Sen. Donald Riegle, D-Mich. “We and the other five finalist states got a raw deal.”

Illinois officials also were angered, with the House Minority Leader Robert Michel calling on President Ronald Reagan to review Herrington’s decision declaring Texas the preferred site for what the department will name the Ronald Reagan Center for High Energy Physics.

Sen. Paul Simon, D-Ill., and Sen. Dennis DeConcini, D-Ariz., said they were asking Reagan and president-elect George Bush to halt confirmation of the site until the General Accounting Office reviews the choice and an independent commission evaluates Herrington’s rationale.

Brian Quirke, U.S. Department of Energy public information officer, said the SSC site determination was “not political.” He said the decision on the super collider location was not made until after the presidential election for that purpose.

Sen. Alan Dixon, D-Ill., charged the administration was using the super collider as a “political tool.”

The Department of Energy made a decision based on politics rather than on merit and the good of the American taxpayer,” Dixon said. “I do not believe that the timing of this decision and its proximity to the election is a coincidence.”

Herrington said all states had asked that the selection be delayed until after the electon, and the department was confident that any examination of the decision would show that it was not politically biased.

William Tardy, chairman of Citizens Against The Collider Here (CATCH), said, “I commend the Department of Energy’s decision. If this project is needed in the U.S., the best qualified site was determined by the Environmental Impact Statement.”

He said the reason the DOE did not determine Illinois as the best site to host the super collider is because there was not enough local support for the project presented at the impact statement hearings held Oct. 6 and 7.

Tardy said the fact that Texas offered a $1.1 billion bond package that would reduce the federal cost to construct the SSC had a “very big effect” on the site determination. But Quirke said, “By law, we (the DOE) were prevented from considering that at all.”

Countryman said the total Illinois contributions were comparable to the offer made by Texas. Illinois had “the best proposal, site and alternatives,” he said.

But Herrington said, “The Texas proposal clearly received the highest overall technical evaluation ratings of any proposal and exhibited no significant overall weaknesses.”

Quirke said the decision was based on the issues of tunneling geology, regional resources, environment and setting. “Texas received outstanding (rankings) in all four categories. Illinois did not.”

The biggest factor against locating the super collider in Illinois was the rigidity of the site proposal, Quirke said.

Illinois received a poor ranking because of its “lack of confidence” in obtaining the necessary land to accommodate the SSC, he said.