LEAD - Dust and mud and lots of smiles highlighted the first blast of rock in the underground mine in Lead since it closed in 2001.

With the aid of about 50 former Homestake mine workers, the underground gold mine is being transformed into a deep science laboratory. Part of that conversion is carving out a tunnel to the large Davis cavern, a room that once housed the first subatomic particle studies dating back half a century at Homestake.

Now, mine crews are making a second access to the cavern in a 300-foot-long tunnel or drift that will also hold a clean room for researchers to perform their studies without any contaminants.

The Wednesday blast started opening the hole for that drift and removed about 15 to 20 tons of rock.

The blast used ANFO (ammonium nitrate - fuel oil) mixture set off by detonation cords that sequenced the explosions in nine holes drilled in the ceiling of the new tunnel.

It is similar technology that was used in the final years of underground mining at Homestake, much to the appreciation of Bill Geffre of Lead. Geffre, an infrastructure technician at the Sanford Lab, first started working as a miner at Homestake in 1974. Until his release from employment in 2001, Geffre worked at all levels doing various jobs. "It's kind of a good feeling to see it happen again," Geffre said. "It's good to be back and doing what guys did for a lot of years."

He said the explosion was loud and dusty.

Miners emerged from the 4,850-foot level at the Ross head frame covered in rust-colored mud left behind when the mine filled with water after closure. Lab crews have pumped out millions of gallons of water since reopening the mine, enough water to fill Canyon Lake in Rapid City more than two times. The residue left behind is oxidized iron from the underground rock. The brown-orange sludge covers everything and was knee-high on engineering project manager William McElroy. McElroy emerged from the water-soaked cage with mud spattered on his face and the same dingy appearance of every other crewman that was down in the mine Wednesday.

"I never thought that a pile of rock could look so beautiful as it did this afternoon," McElroy said.

He said a lot of people put in a lot of time and effort to bring this day to reality. From safety and rock studies, to installation of electrical lines and ventilation, all were restarted from zero after the water was removed, McElroy said.

He credited the former Homestake employees for making the re-entry phase run smoothly. "We are very, very fortunate to have them," McElroy said. "They know the rock and they have the job skills and the safety skills. They are an asset to the project."

After the charges exploded, McElroy said the rock behaved as predicted. Analysts figure the 4,850-foot level has plenty of good rock to build large caverns and Wednesday's blast buttressed that assumption.

"There was a big sense of relief," McElroy said. "There's some big smiles. It's just a huge milestone."

Crews will work in two shifts with one starting at 6:30 a.m. and the second wrapping up at 3:30 a.m. There will be two scheduled blasts every day, one at 4:30 p.m. and the second at 3:30 a.m.

The crews will engage in precision blasting techniques that will leave behind a smooth rock face in the new tunnel. It will require less support structures and be more suitable for a laboratory.

The tons of rock created by the project will be moved to the 1,700-foot level for waste deposit.

Lab officials are leasing LHD's, load-haul-dump machines, which can maneuver in tight quarters underground.

McElroy said the machines had to be partially dismantled and lowered into the mine using the Yates shaft and cage system. The two-inch thick cable blackened by lubricating grease takes items from the surface straight down to the 4,850-foot level.

One piece required special rigging to the belly of the cage. McElroy rode with the four-ton piece strapped below in the 105-minute trip down to its new home. It usually takes less than 15 minutes to make the trip.

"It was just shaking and popping and creaking," McElroy said last week. "For guys that have done this 200 times, it's no big deal. I did it once and it's probably my last."

Underground powder magazines also had to be created, at a safe distance from one another, along with other safety measures.

The Large Underground Xenon experiment, or LUX, will be installed in the Davis

Cavern, where Ray Davis installed the neutrino detector that won him a share of the 2002 Nobel Prize for physics. Technicians, many of them former Homestake miners, already have removed tons of steel from the cavern to prepare it for the LUX detector, which will search for an elusive substance called "dark matter," according to Lab spokesman Bill Harlan.

The second experiment, the Majorana detector, will further study neutrinos. Majorana researchers will use a new cavern on the 4,850-foot level to "electroform" ultra-pure copper free of contamination by the cosmic rays that bathe the surface of the earth. The copper will be used to construct an experiment to detect an extremely rare phenomenon called "neutrinoless double beta decay."

The project:

Budget: $5.5 million (blasting and rock removal $2 million)

Crews (11 underground and 6 above ground) will work four 10-hour shifts per week

Completion of excavation: April or May 2010

Completion of lab facility: late July 2010

Tunnel: 320 feet long, 12 feet high and 8 feet wide