The National Ignition Facility Project

The mission of the National Ignition Facility is to achieve ignition and gain in ICF targets in the laboratory. The facility will be used for defense applications such as weapons physics and weapons effect testing, and for civilian applications such as fusion energy development and fundamental studies of matter at high temperatures and densities. This paper reviews the design, schedule and costs associated with the construction project

Status of the National Ignition Facility project

The ultimate goal of worldwide research in inertial confinement fusion (ICF) is to develop fusion as an inexhaustible, economic, environmentally safe source of electric power. Following nearly thirty years of laboratory and underground fusion experiments, the next step toward this goal is to demonstrate ignition and propagating burn of fusion fuel in the laboratory. The National Ignition Facility(NIF) Project is being constructed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), for just this purpose. NIF will use advanced Nd-glass laser technology to deliver 1.8 MJ of 0.35-um laser light in a shaped pulse, several nanoseconds in duration, achieving a peak power of 500 TW. A national community of U.S. laboratories is participating in this project, now in its final design phase. Franceand the United Kingdom are collaborating on development of required technology under bilateral agreements with the US. This paper presents thestatus of the laser design and development of its principal components and optical elements

National Ignition Facility for Inertial Confinement Fusion

The National Ignition Facility for inertial confinement fusion will contain a 1.8 MJ, 500 TW frequency-tripled neodymium glass laser system that will be used to explore fusion ignition and other problems in the physics of high temperature and density. We describe the facility briefly. The NIF is scheduled to be completed in 2003

Atomic vapor laser isotope separation

Atomic vapor laser isotope separation (AVLIS) is a general and powerful technique. A major present application to the enrichment of uranium for light-water power reactor fuel has been under development for over 10 years. In June 1985 the Department of Energy announced the selection of AVLIS as the technology to meet the nation's future need for the internationally competitive production of uranium separative work. The economic basis for this decision is considered, with an indicated of the constraints placed on the process figures of merit and the process laser system. We then trace an atom through a generic AVLIS separator and give examples of the physical steps encountered, the models used to describe the process physics, the fundamental parameters involved, and the role of diagnostic laser measurements

Science, technology, and the industrialization of laser-driven processes

Members of the laser program at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) reviewed potential applications of lasers in industry, some of which are: isotope separation; cleanup of radioactive waste; trace impurity removal; selective chemical reactions; photochemical activation or dissociation of gases; control of combustion particulates; crystal and powder chemistry; and laser induced biochemistry. Many of these areas are currently under active study in the community. The investigation at LLNL focused on laser isotope separation of atomic uranium because of the large demand (> 1000 tonnes/year) and high product enrichment price (> $600/kg of product) for material used as fuel in commercial light-water nuclear power reactors. They also believed that once the technology was fully developed and deployed, it could be applied directly to separating many elements economically on an industrial scale. The Atomic Vapor Laser Isotope Separation (AVLIS) program at LLNL has an extensive uranium and plutonium program of >$100 M in FY85 and a minor research program for other elements. This report describes the AVLIS program conducted covering the following topics; candidate elements; separative work units; spectroscopic selectivety; major systems; facilities; integrated process model;multivariable sensitivety studies; world market; and US enrichment enterprise. 23 figs. (AT

The National Ignition Facility Project. Revision 1

The mission of the National Ignition Facility is to achieve ignition and gain in inertial confinement fusion targets in the laboratory. The facility will be used for defense applications such as weapons physics and weapons effects testing, and for civilian applications such as fusion energy development and fundamental studies of matter at high temperatures and densities. This paper reviews the design, schedule, and costs associated with the construction project

The National Ignition Facility Project

The mission of the National Ignition Facility is to achieve ignition and gain in ICF targets in the laboratory. The facility will be used for defense applications such as weapons physics and weapons effect testing, and for civilian applications such as fusion energy development and fundamental studies of matter at high temperatures and densities. This paper reviews the design, schedule and costs associated with the construction project

National Ignition Facility design, performance, and cost

A conceptual design for the National Ignition Facility (NIF) has been completed and its cost has been estimated by a multilaboratory team. To maximize the performance/cost ratio a compact, segmented amplifier is used in a multipass architecture. Many recent optical and laser technology developments have been incorporated into the final design. The Beamlet project has successfully demonstrated the new concept. The mission of ICF Program using the NEF is to achieve ignition and gain in the laboratory. The facility will be used for defense applications such as weapons physics and weapons effects experiments, and for civilian applications such as inertial fusion energy development and fundamental studies of matter at high energy density

Measurement of atomic oscillator strengths in ytterbium by observation of coherent Rabi oscillations of excited-state populations

Two methods have been used to measure the oscillator strength of the transition between the ground and 17,992 cm level in XUYb. The first technique involves exciting the transition with a laser pulse that is nearly time-bandwidth limited, of uniform intensity, and has a reproducible shape from shot to shot. The population left in the excited state after the pulse varies sinusoidally with a period that depends on the integral over time of the electric field amplitude and the transition oscillator strength. These are the Rabi oscillations that are predicted by application of the Schrodinger equation to the two-level atom. The second method involves observation of the polarization rotation of a set of degenerate sublevels brought about by a light-shift laser. One sublevel (m/sub j/ = 0) of the J = 1 level at 17,992 cm is populated by a linearly polarized laser. A second copropagating light-shift laser, which is linearly polarized at an angle to the first laser, is tuned between 7.5 and 30 GHz off-resonance with the transition. The light-shift laser causes population to be promoted into the m/sub j/ = +-1 levels through the virtual J = 0, m/sub j/ = 0 level. Two linearly polarized photoionizing lasers photoionize the population only from the m/sub j/ = +-1 levels. The photoion signal oscillates cosinusoidally with a period that depends only on the integrated pulse intensity, the laser detuning, and the transition oscillator strength. Finally, polarization selectivity has been shown experimentally to allow selective photoionization of the odd isotopes of ytterbium using broadband lasers