LEAD - About 200 scientists representing seven national laboratories are meeting this week in Lead to plan a detailed course of construction for the National Science Foundation's Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory, to be built 8,000 feet deep at the former Homestake Mine.

Physicist and prinicipal investigator Kevin Lesko said the lab's design work is gaining size and scope.

"The DUSEL team is going to a larger group of scientists. We are forming a big union here," Lesko said.

Planned experiments, which would be shielded from the atmospheric interference on the Earth's surface, include chemistry, physics, geology and biology.

South Dakota philanthropist T. Denny Sanford has donated $70 million to the state in order to set up an interim laboratory at the 4,850-foot level. The Sanford Lab will act as a starting point for NSF-funded research while the deeper lab is being built.

Some of the scientists got to see the mine's workings for the first time this week, according to Kenneth Lande, a long-time researcher in the mine. Lande said many of conference participants already have experience in other underground labs, but none of those labs will be as deep as the DUSEL.

"There is a broad spectrum of interests," Lande said. "There is a great deal of interest in this underground laboratory."

Mark Hanhardt, a graduate student at South Dakota School of Mines & Technology, is attending this week's conference at the Golden Hills Resort. He graduated from Sturgis High School in 1999, when his father, Jim, was an underground miner at Homestake.

As the mining operation was shutting down in 2002, Mark Hanhardt was studying astrophysics at the School of Mines while his father was looking for a new job. Now, the Hanhardts are linked by the mine. A year ago, Jim Hanhardt took a job with RCS Construction, the contractor rebuilding the Yates Shaft at the former mine.

Mark Hanhardt's graduate studies include the LUX project, one of the first experiments planned for the Sanford Lab. He will assemble equipment above ground, calibrate it, take it apart and re-assemble it once the 4,850 level is ready, sometime next summer.

He jumped at the opportunity.

"I couldn't turn it down," he said. "It is an incredible coincidence that I ended up here at all."