About the facilities

SNOLAB is located on the traditional territory of the Robinson-Huron Treaty of 1850, shared by the Indigenous people of the surrounding Atikameksheng Anishnawbek First Nation as part of the larger Anishinabek Nation.

We acknowledge those who came before us and honour those who are the caretakers of this land and the waters.

SNOLAB is a unique facility for deep underground science, shielded from surface background radiation and operating as a class-2000 clean lab. It is the only underground facility of its kind in Canada, and is currently the deepest cleanest lab in the world. The underground facility is 2 km deep in the Vale Creighton mine near Sudbury, Ontario. SNOLAB’s science program is primarily focused on astroparticle physics. Questions in this branch of physics are explored through multi-tonne detectors in ultra-low background radioactivity environments, making SNOLAB ideally suited to host such experiments.

SNOLAB’s 2 km of rock shielding protects the detectors from cosmic radiation that bombards Earth’s surface. Background radiation is reduced by a factor of 50 million – down to one cosmic ray per 4 m2 per day. In this environment, unwanted particle interactions do not obscure the rare interactions the experiments are looking for, resulting in usable data.

SNOLAB’s facilities include the underground laboratory with 5000 m2 of clean room space and support facilities, and the surface building with offices, operational support facilities, and further clean lab space.