ANDES, an underground laboratory in the Agua Negra tunnel

X. BERTOU

Simposio; VIII SILAFAE; 2010

The Agua Negra Deep Experiment Site (ANDES) is a proposal to build an underground laboratory in the Agua Negra tunnel, a 14km long tunnel planned between the province of San Juan in Argentina and the 4th region of Coquimbo in Chile. It is of strategic importance for the region as it opens a new route from Brazil and Argentina towards the Asian market via Chile. The tunnel tender is expected to start in 2011. The ANDES laboratory would be the only deep underground laboratory in the Southern hemisphere, and with about 1750m of rock overburden, would provide a ultra-low radiation area, with cosmic ray flux reduced by a factor about 10^6. It is expected to host world-class experiments in various areas of physics, geology and biology, and would be handled by a Consortium (CLES: Consorcio Latinoamericano de Experimentos Subterráneos), formed by scientists from Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico. Its unique location would open the door to ultra-long baseline neutrino studies, and allow checking the annual modulations observed in some Dark Matter experiments, among many other experiments.