The MAJORANA project (styled Majorana) is an international effort to search for neutrinoless double-beta (0νββ) decay in 76Ge. The project builds upon the work of previous experiments, notably those performed by the Heidelberg–Moscow and IGEX collaborations, which used high-purity germanium (HPGe) detectors, to study neutrinoless double-beta decay.The first stage of the project is the Majorana Demonstrator, designed to demonstrate the technique and evaluate a ton-scale experiment.
Cryostats housing up to 40 kg of natural and enriched germanium detectors are being deployed in low-background vacuum cryostats, underground (1,480 m) at the Sanford Underground Laboratory in Lead, South Dakota. Following the Demonstrator, the collaboration intends to merge with the GERDA collaboration to build a much larger experiment called LEGEND.