Virginia Gives Jefferson Lab $3 Million to Help Bid for New Department of Energy Project

Virginia will give the Jefferson Lab $3 million to help the Newport News national laboratory bid for a major new Department of Energy project.

The project, a high-performance data facility, could have an enormous economic impact on the Peninsula, said state Sen. Monty Mason, D-Williamsburg, who pushed to add the money to the state budget for fiscal 2023. It will help the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility prepare detailed plans and engineering work to bid for the facility, Mason said.

“Just to give you an idea of the scale of Department of Energy work, Jeff Lab got something like $400 to $500 million of work from the electron-ion collider that New York got,” Mason said, referring to large project that the Virginia lab competed for but lost in 2020.