As home to powerful particle accelerators and stories-high particle detectors, Fermilab requires a vast infrastructure to support its experiments. Our site, which functions like a high-tech small city, relies on traditional utilities and infrastructure systems and a team of experts who design, build and oversee operations of conventional facilities. We maintain our own electrical power grid, acres of state-of-the-art office and laboratory building space, a network of well-traveled roads, and water systems for drinking and cooling experiments.
A by-the-numbers rundown of our property infrastructure gives a sense of the size of our facilities:
- 6,800 acres of land (much of which is managed natural landscape)
- $1.9 billion total replacement plant value
- 366 buildings, 2.4 million gross square feet
- 101 miles of electric cable energized through
- 2 primary electric substations, and
- 241 secondary electric substations
- 20 miles of natural gas pipe
- 24 miles of industrial cooling water pipe and conveyances
- 20 miles of domestic (drinking) water pipe
- 16 miles of sanitary (waste water) pipe
- 15 ponds
- 36 miles of roads and
- 112 acres of parking lots