Target area and diagnostic interface issues on the National Ignition Facility (invited)

Abstract

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) is under construction at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for the DOE Stockpile Stewardship Program. It will be used for experiments for inertial confinement fusion ignition, high energy density science, and basic science. Many interface issues confront the experimentalist who wishes to design, fabricate, and install diagnostics, and to help this process, a set of standards and guideline documents is being prepared. Compliance with these will be part of a formal diagnostic design review process. In this article we provide a short description of each, with reference to more complete documentation. The complete documentation will also be available through the NIF Diagnostics web page. Target area interface issues are grouped into three categories. First are the layout and utility interface issues which include the safety analysis report, target area facility layout; target chamber port locations; diagnostic interferences and envelopes; utilities and cable tray distribution; and timing and fiducial systems. Second are the environment interface issues which include radiation electromagnetic interference/electromagnetic pulse effects and mitigation; electrical grounding, shielding, and isolation; and cleanliness and vacuum guidelines. Third are the operational interface issues which include manipulator based target diagnostics, diagnostic alignment, shot life cycle and setup, diagnostic controllers; integrated computer control system; shot data archival; classified operations; and remote operations.