National Ignition Campaign seminars underway

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) is a "national treasure" for the Laboratory and the world, in the view of LLNL scientist Jeff Atherton.

Atherton, the Lab's National Ignition Campaign (NIC) director, delivered an hour-long presentation Wednesday, to kick off a five-week NIC seminar series in the Bldg. 123 main auditorium.

"We are extremely excited to have the chance to work on this program," Atherton told the audience.

The near-term goal of the NIC is to begin the ignition experimental campaigns on the NIF beginning in fiscal year 2010 and to develop an ignition platform that is predictable and repeatable for high-energy density physics in 2012.

"We will do about as many as 200 experiments in the run up to ignition," Atherton said.

"One of the aims of the experimental campaign is to reduce the margin of uncertainty, so that there is a high probability of achieving ignition before deuterium-tritium experiments start," Atherton said.

"Our FY 09-10 experimental campaign will systematically reduce uncertainty in the ignition design while phasing in facility capability."

Four integrated teams of scientists and engineers will execute the ignition campaign in the months to come — for the laser, the hohlraum, and the capsule and for ignition itself.

In his presentation, Atherton noted that the NIC is a national collaboration, involving the National Nuclear Security Administration, Sandia National Laboratories, Los Alamos National Laboratory, General Atomics and the Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE) at the University of Rochester.

The NIF produced nearly 1.1 megajoules of energy with all 192 beams in an implosion-like pulse in March.

As an example of how the NIF scientists have upgraded efficiencies, Atherton noted that in 2004 they used to produce two or three cryogenic targets per year. Now they turn out 10 per month, and are ramping toward 20 per month.

Four more talks are slated in the NIC seminar series. All talks will be in the Bldg. 123 auditorium, 10:30 a.m-noon.

• "Point Design Margins and Uncertainty for the NIC," by John Lindl, Tuesday, April 28
• "The NIC Experimental Program, " by Brian MacGowan, Tuesday, May 5
• "Cryogenic Targets for the NIC," by Alex Hamza, Tuesday, May 12
• "THD and DT Ignition Experiments," by John Edwards, Tuesday, May 19