Review of the Department of Energy's Inertial Confinement Fusion Program: The National Ignition Facility (1997)

The maintenance of a safe and reliable U.S. nuclear stockpile over the long term is the mission of the Stockpile Stewardship and Management Program. In the absence of nuclear testing, this program will require an improved understanding of nuclear weapon behavior in the areas of performance, safety, and reliability. Development of this understanding will increasingly depend on computer simulations and analyses benchmarked against past data and new, more comprehensive information obtained from carefully designed laboratory experiments. These experiments will be carried out using a combination of new and existing facilities. New facilities are required to improve access to the physics regimes important for understanding nuclear weapon behavior.

Table B.1 identifies existing and planned Inertial Confinement Fusion program facilities as well as selected other major stockpile stewardship facilities. The list includes those proposed by individual laboratories, many of which have not yet been approved by DOE. Finally, two major stockpile stewardship and management programs, the Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI) and the Advanced Design and Production Technology (ADaPT), are listed for completeness.

A brief description of each of the facilities follows:

• ADaPT is an initiative to develop the tools to integrate the development of weapons components with associated advanced manufacturing and materials processes.

• AHF is a proposed advanced hydrotest facility using new and developing accelerator technology that would provide time-resolved images of the implosion of a weapon primary from several different angles of view.

• APT is a proposed alternative for producing tritium using an accelerator instead of a nuclear reactor.

• ASCI is an initiative to create the leading-edge computational modeling and simulation capabilities that are essential for maintaining the safety, reliability, and performance of the nuclear stockpile.

• ATLAS is a new pulsed-power facility with a 36-MJ capacitor bank that will provide an order-of-magnitude increase in dynamical pressure over that provided by PEGASUS.

• CFF is located at LLNL Site 300 to provide a continuing capability for testing the high-explosive component of a nuclear weapon.

• DARHT, a hydrotesting facility under construction at LANL, provides two views of an imploded pit through the use of two electron accelerators placed at right angles to each other.

• HEAF is an experimental facility at LANL that assesses detonators and the initiation and burning of high explosives.

• HEPPF is a proposed next-generation large-explosive experimental facility at the Nevada Test Site for experimental physics studies related to weapons secondary at shock pressures and velocities approaching actual weapon conditions.

• LANSCE is a defense programs neutron science center. The LAMPF complex at LANL has been converted to LANSCE to support general defense program objectives, particularly radiographic and neutron studies.

• LPSS is a proposed 1-MW cold neutron source at LANL for the study advanced materials.

• NIF is a 192-beam, 1.8-MJ glass laser facility for conducting high-energy-density experiments (temperatures up to 600 eV) and demonstrating inertial fusion ignition in the laboratory.

• NIKE is a 4-kJ krypton fluoride (FrF) gas laser at NRL for studying direct-drive inertial fusion issues and other related phenomena.

• NOVA is a 10-beam (~40-kJ) glass laser facility at LLNL for conducting indirect drive inertial fusion experiments and weapons-related high-energy-density science experiments.

• OMEGA is a 60-beam (45-kJ) glass laser facility at the University of Rochester for conducting direct-drive inertial fusion experiments.

• PBFA is a fast-pulsed accelerator (~50 ns) at Sandia National Laboratories; PBFA II, PBFA X, and PBFA Z are modifications to the accelerator to conduct light ion inertial fusion experiments, light ion extraction experiments, and z-pinch experiments, respectively.

• PEGASUS is a 4.3-MJ capacitor bank at LANL with a slow (microseconds) direct drive for hydrodynamic studies with an experimental volume of I cubic centimeter.

• PHERMEX is a dynamic radiography facility located at LANL.

• PROCYON is a 15-MJ, high-explosive, pulsed-power system at LANL providing 2-to 6-microsecond drive. It has been used for direct-drive plasma implosions to produce soft x-rays for weapon physics experiments.

• SABRE is a positive-polarity-induction linear accelerator located at SNL. SABRE uses an extraction ion diode and is used mainly for studies of light ion beam generation, transport, and focusing.

• SATURN is a fast-pulsed accelerator at SNL that can produce a 600-kJ radiation source from a 4-MJ Marx capacitor bank. The source is used for studies of nuclear weapons effects and hohlraums (up to 100 eV).

• SPSS is a capability at LANSCE to provide moderated (low-energy) neutrons with wavelengths comparable to atomic physics dimensions to address primary physics issues.

• TRIDENT is a multipurpose Nd:glass laser facility at LANL that supports inertial fusion, weapons physics, and other experiments and instrument development. Trident has two main beams with 100 J per beam in a 100-ps pulse with a third beam used for backlighting. The TRIDENT Upgrade is proposed to produce several kilojoules.

• WETF is a facility at LANL to investigate tritium technology for weapons applications.

• X-1 is a proposed advanced z-pinch radiation source producing 8 to 10 MJ of soft x-rays.