Heidelberg 1999 – scientific programme

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AKA: Arbeitskreis Physik und Abrüstung

AKA IV: HV IV

AKA IV.1: Invited Talk

Thursday, March 18, 1999, 14:00–15:00, CH3

Nuclear Weapons Research Capabilities of the National Ignition Facility — •Matthew G. McKinzie — Natural Resources Defense Council, Washington D.C.

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) is a 1.8 MJ, 500 TW glass laser Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) facility being built at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Program costs in the construction phase will exceed 1 Billion USD. The NIF’s user community is dominated by the U.S. nuclear weapons program but includes the U.S. Department of Defense and the UK’s Atomic Weapons Establishment, as well as academic and industry groups. The NIF’s role in supporting nuclear weapon science for the US and the UK is predicated on two technical strategies. First, research is planned for the NIF which will provide experimental data related to physical properties of materials at the extreme values of the state variables and in non-local thermodynamic equilibrium (non LTE) to support future weapons computer simulations. Second, experimental data is to be obtained on the behavior of irradiated, complex targets to verify weapon code predictions, f.e. in the area of hydrodynamic instability and mixing at accelerated material interfaces. Should ignition experiments prove successful, this capability is anticipated to expand NIF’s function in ways distinct from Inertial Fusion Energy applications (f.e. in weapons effects testing of military equipment).