Aiken County's entrance into the highly touted but unproven hydrogen business is starting to take shape.

Officials have secured about $1.2 million in grant money to pay for the county's $9.2 million laboratory, which the Aiken County Council voted to build in May, and land at the Savannah River Technology Center off South Carolina Highway 278 has been cleared to make way for the building, County Administrator Clay Killian said Wednesday.

On Tuesday, representatives from the Economic Development Partnership of Aiken and Edgefield counties showed the council preliminary drawings of the facility and announced that U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., would speak at the ceremonial groundbreaking Aug. 2.

"This is South Carolina's premier hydrogen lab, and we want it to look the part," Ernie Chaput, the project coordinator for the development partnership, which is marketing the lab, told the council.

The county is negotiating with the Aiken Electric Cooperative Inc. on a low-interest loan and will pay for the remainder of the 59,000-square-foot lab with a 10- to 12-year bond, Mr. Killian said. It's going out on a limb by financing the lab, which will be shared by scientists from the Savannah River National Laboratory and members of the private sector who will explore the gas's potential for commercial purposes.

Scientists say hydrogen could replace fossil fuels and power things such as automobiles and streetlights, though it has yet to pass commercial market tests.

"There's always a risk, but this is a positive step forward for council to act on this," council Chairman Ronnie Young said, emphasizing the potential for new jobs.

The county isn't going in without assurances. Westinghouse Savannah River Co., which runs Savannah River Site for the Department of Energy, will lease its portion of the lab for $748,000 a year for 10 years, and at least two international automakers have expressed interest in working with the lab.

"If you look ahead 15 or 20 years, most of the experts say the supply of petroleum levels will become very critical because it will actually be falling," said Mr. Chaput, who retired from SRS in 1986 as a deputy manager for DOE. "You need to be looking ahead to what the replacement fuel will be."

It will take 13 to 15 contractors to build the lab, which requires special materials and construction because hydrogen is an explosive gas. The development partnership will start accepting bids in late August, Mr. Chaput said, and construction likely will start in October.