A group of Japanese scientists has proposed the Kitakami mountain area as a candidate site for the construction of the International Linear Collider (ILC), a next-generation particle accelerator that will allow physicists to explore rudimentary questions about the universe.

The Kitakami area straddles Iwate and Miyagi prefectures. The team of physicists had also looked at the Sefuri mountain area in Fukuoka and Saga prefectures, Jiji Press reported Saturday.

The ILC will complement the Large Hadron Collider at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), which confirmed the existence of the Higgs boson - a particle understood to impart mass. It would be built in a tunnel about 30 kilometers long.

The project was set in motion when an international team of scientists and others drafted a report on the engineering design of the ILC in June. Construction costs are estimated to total 830 billion yen ($8.67 billion) and the project is expected to generate 530,000 jobs.

According to the Japan Productivity Center, the project is expected to yield an economic impact of around 45 trillion yen over 30 years.

With the construction site expected to be decided around 2015, Japan will talk to other participants in the ILC project including the United States, Europe, China and Russia.

Construction is expected to take around a decade, with experiments beginning around 2030. If the collider is built in Japan, then the country is expected to shoulder about half of the construction costs.

© Japan Today/Reuters