Author: Beaulac, L.
Paper Title Page
WE2BCO02 In the Midst of Fusion Ignition: A Look at the State of the National Ignition Facility Control and Information Systems 973
 
  • M. Fedorov, A.I. Barnes, L. Beaulac, A.D. Casey, J.R. Castro Morales, J. Dixon, C.M. Estes, M.S. Flegel, V.K. Gopalan, S. Heerey, R. Lacuata, V.J. Miller Kamm, B.P. Patel, M. Paul, N.I. Spafford, J.L. Vaher
    LLNL, Livermore, USA
 
  Funding: This work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344
The Na­tional Ig­ni­tion Fa­cil­ity (NIF) is the world’s largest and most en­er­getic 192-laser-beam sys­tem which con­ducts ex­per­i­ments in High En­ergy Den­sity (HED) physics and In­er­tial Con­fine­ment Fu­sion (ICF). In De­cem­ber 2022, the NIF achieved a sci­en­tific break­through when, for the first time ever, the ICF ig­ni­tion oc­curred under lab­o­ra­tory con­di­tions. The key to the NIF’s ex­per­i­men­tal prowess and ver­sa­til­ity is not only its power but also its pre­cise con­trol. The NIF con­trols and data sys­tems place the ex­per­i­menter in full com­mand of the laser and tar­get di­ag­nos­tics ca­pa­bil­i­ties. The re­cently up­graded Mas­ter Os­cil­la­tor Room (MOR) sys­tem pre­cisely shapes NIF laser pulses in the tem­po­ral, spa­tial, and spec­tral do­mains. Apart from the pri­mary 10-me­ter spher­i­cal tar­get cham­ber, the NIF laser beams can now be di­rected to­wards two more ex­per­i­men­tal sta­tions to study laser in­ter­ac­tions with op­tics and large full beam tar­gets. The NIF’s wide range of tar­get di­ag­nos­tics con­tin­ues to ex­pand with new tools to probe and cap­ture com­plex plasma phe­nom­ena using x-rays, gamma-rays, neu­trons, and ac­cel­er­ated pro­tons. While the in­creas­ing neu­tron yields mark the NIF’s steady progress to­wards ex­cit­ing ex­per­i­men­tal regimes, they also re­quire new mit­i­ga­tions for ra­di­a­tion dam­age in con­trol and di­ag­nos­tic elec­tron­ics. With many NIF com­po­nents ap­proach­ing 20 years of age, a Sus­tain­ment Plan is now un­der­way to mod­ern­ize NIF, in­clud­ing con­trols and in­for­ma­tion sys­tems, to as­sure NIF op­er­a­tions through 2040.
LLNL Release Number: LLNL-ABS-847574
 
slides icon Slides WE2BCO02 [4.213 MB]  
DOI • reference for this paper ※ doi:10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2023-WE2BCO02  
About • Received ※ 02 October 2023 — Revised ※ 09 October 2023 — Accepted ※ 14 December 2023 — Issued ※ 14 December 2023
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