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Overview of the National Ignition Facility

Conference ·

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will be the world's largest and most powerful laser system for inertial confinement fusion (ICF) and experiments studying high energy density (HED) science. NIF is a 192 beam Nd-glass laser facility that will produce 1.8 MJ, 500 TW of ultraviolet light making it over fifty times more energetic than present ICF facilities. The NIF Project began in 1995 and is scheduled for completion in 2009. Ignition experiments on NIF, which will use tritium, are scheduled to begin in 2010. Tritium will arrive at the facility in individual target assemblies. The assemblies will be mounted to the Cryogenic TARget POSitioner (TARPOS), which provides the cryogenic cooling systems necessary to complete the formation of the ignition target's fuel ice layer. It also provides the positioning system that transports and holds the target at the center of the NIF chamber during a shot. After a shot, unburned tritium will be captured by the cryopumps. Upon regeneration, the cryopump effluent will be directed to the Tritium Processing System, part of NIF's. Personnel and Environmental Protection Systems. These systems also include, local contamination control systems, area and stack tritium monitoring systems, a decontamination area, and waste packaging and characterization capability. This equipment will be used along with standard contamination control practices to manage the tritium hazard to workers and to limit releases to the environment to negligibly small amounts.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Livermore, CA
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
DOE Contract Number:
W-7405-ENG-48
OSTI ID:
922120
Report Number(s):
UCRL-CONF-234184
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

References (5)

Radioactively induced sublimation in solid tritium journal March 1988
The physics basis for ignition using indirect-drive targets on the National Ignition Facility journal February 2004
Increasing robustness of indirect drive capsule designs against short wavelength hydrodynamic instabilities journal May 2005
Quantitative characterization of inertial confinement fusion capsules using phase contrast enhanced x-ray imaging journal March 2005
X-ray imaging of cryogenic deuterium-tritium layers in a beryllium shell journal November 2005

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