The megajoule laser program - ignition at hand

The French Commissariat a l Etnergie Atomique (CEA) is currently building the Laser MegaJoule (LMJ)1 a 240-beam laser facility, at the CEA Laboratory CESTA near Bordeaux. LMJ will be a cornerstone of CEA's "Programme Simulation", the French Stockpile Stewardship Program. LMJ is designed to deliver about 2 MJ of 0.35 mu m light to targets for high energy density physics experiments, among which fusion experiments. LMJ technological choices were validated with the Ligne d' Integration Laser (LIL), a scale I prototype of one LMJ bundle, built at CEA/CESTA. Plasma experiments started at the end of 2004 on LIL, which is already open to the scientific community through the Plasma and Lasers Institute. The construction of the LMJ building itself started in March of 2003. LMJ will be gradually commissioned from early 2011, and after an experimental program to progress toward fusion, the first fusion experiments will begin late 2012.