The National Ignition Facility: Status and Plans

Abstract

Summary form only given. The National Ignition Facility (NIF) is a 192 beam laser facility presently under construction at LLNL. When completed, NIF will produce 1.8 MJ, 500 TW of ultraviolet light making it the world's largest and most powerful laser system. NIF will be the world's preeminent facility for performing experiments for fusion ignition for inertial confinement fusion (ICF) and experiments studying high energy density science (HEDS). The project, begun in 1995, is nearly 80% complete. The building and the beam path are essentially completed. The remaining work is mostly to complete the optics and install them in the beam path. The project is scheduled for completion in 2009. Four of the NIF beams have been commissioned to demonstrate laser performance and to commission the target area including target and beam alignment and laser timing. During this time, NIF demonstrated on a single beam basis that it meets its performance goals producing up to 10.4 kJ of 3omega light and 11.4 kJ of 2omega light. Experiments have demonstrated the laser's precision and flexibility for pulse shaping, pointing, and timing. Beam conditioning techniques, important for target performance, were also demonstrated. The focal spot can be tailored to user specifications using phase plates. Temporal smoothing using smoothing by spectral dispersion (SSD) was demonstrated. Polarization smoothing was also demonstrated. It also performed four important target experiments for ICF and HEDS. Hydrodynamic experiments produced valuable data to compare with three dimensional radiation-hydrodynamics modeling codes under development. In radiation drive experiments, radiation temperatures greater than 300 eV were produced. An integrated plan is being developed to begin ignition experiments in 2010. This plan includes the NIF operations, user equipment such as diagnostics and cryogenic target capability, and experiments and calculations. This talk will provide NIF status, the plan to complete NIF, and the path to ignition