NATIONAL-IGNITION-FACILITY DESIGN, PERFORMANCE, AND COST

A conceptual design for the National Ignition Facility (NIF) has been completed acid its cost has been estimated by an 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 NIF 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. This work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under contract W-7405-Eng-48.