Firing up NIF for National Security Applications

NIF’s unprecedented capabilities and versatility enable a broad range of research that focuses on four major mission areas. Fundamental differences, however, typically exist between the Stockpile Stewardship missions of inertial confinement fusion and high energy density science; Discovery Science; and the National Security Applications (NSA) mission.

"NSA is a vehicle for the Department of Defense and other government agencies to do experiments on NIF," says Brent Blue, the NSA program manager. "We have an open call for proposals, which get peer reviewed. Then, researchers are awarded time. Many of them are not from the Laboratory or even part of the NNSA (National Nuclear Security Administration) complex. Our team helps them execute their experiments."

On average, 30 to 40 NSA shots a year are performed. Livermore, Sandia, and Los Alamos lead some of these experiments as do many other partners, such as the Naval Research Laboratory and agencies as far away as the United Kingdom.

An important subset of the experiments aims at investigating the survivability of components exposed to the extreme environments present during nuclear detonations. In those cases, researchers want to understand how the materials that make up these components will respond. NIF can replicate different types of radiation bombardment in a precisely controlled manner that offers many opportunities for analysis.

"A part might be manufactured in two different ways," Blue says. "Each looks the same. Some benchtop tests say both perform the same. But under intense radiation environments, will they respond differently? Models might not catch this. However, we can probe for it. The data can then be used to improve the models."

For other missions, the laser and target interaction during a shot generates conditions, such as plasma and fusion, that are the objects of study. For NSA, the interaction between the laser and target produces a bright (powerful) radiation source that is used to probe and examine samples physically separated from the laser and target. In fact, for many NSA shots a hohlraum containing a fuel capsule is not used.

The samples, which can be 50 millimeters in diameter, remain solid during a shot and never become plasma. Also, as opposed to the other NIF missions that concentrate the laser energy on a target within the first 20 nanoseconds of a shot and nothing remains afterward to examine, the period of interest for NSA shots leans toward microseconds—which could be a sample’s material response time—and could extend out to minutes, days, months, and even later.

"Our samples don’t break apart. They stay together," Blue says. "We take them out after a shot and do more analysis. So, it is not just the active measurements we make during the shot, but the measurements we take afterward once the samples are back in the lab."

The diagnostics hold the samples. A probe might be looking at the motion of the rear surfaces of samples to understand how shocks are transmitted. A thermocouple can measure temperature changes. Strain gauges can monitor how samples deform.

"NIF is very good at converting the laser energy into bright sources of x rays," Blue says. "Imagine a flash of light from a camera, but instead it’s a giant flash made of x rays. We can tune their energy and wavelength. Some researchers might want a specific frequency x-ray line while others might require something that’s broadband. So we can also tune the spectrum."

As a megajoule-class laser facility, NIF can produce nanosecond bursts of high energy x-rays. Energy of a few hundred kilojoules can be reached, which is nearly an order of magnitude greater than the next most energetic laser system capable of nanosecond pulses.

These bursts behave like point sources that illuminate everything uniformly inside the Target Chamber, so a sample will only be struck by a portion of the total flux of x rays radiating from the target.

"We position the samples up close to get to the high fluences that are needed. Hefty doses of x rays smack the samples very hard and launch shockwaves through them. Interesting physics happens," Blue says.

By changing the distance between the target and the samples, the NSA team can match the amount of x-ray energy that researchers require. Samples can be positioned as close as a few centimeters from the target for a very high dose, or more than a meter away where the dose is much lower. One of the diagnostics is so sensitive that it remains outside the Target Chamber, connected by an open gate valve.

Once researchers set the requirements for the type of radiation they want to use for their shot, the NSA team matches them up with the right target. When NIF’s laser energy is applied, the immense heat causes the target to emit x rays that are uniquely characteristic of the material making up the target. If x rays with different characteristics are needed, the target material is changed. At about a gram or less, some targets are solids while some are gases.

"In the case of a gas, we have a tube that looks somewhat like a hohlraum," Blue notes. "It has windows to hold in the gas, and the laser enters at the top and bottom. The gas could be krypton, which would emit x rays at 13 keV (kiloelectron volts). Or xenon can be used to generate 4.5 keV x rays. If it is a solid material, such as silver, we make a thin shell that looks like a soda can. We shine the laser inside, which heats the silver to the point where it emits 22 keV x rays."

Low-Density Targets

Targets made of low density silver foams, not much denser than air, have also been fielded. Instead of the laser stopping at the surface as with a solid wall, it can propagate through the foam, allowing uniform heating across its volume.

NIF can also generate and tune bright sources of neutrons at 14 megaelectron volts (MeV). Neutrons will pass right though a sample but will still interact with the material. In addition to material science, neutron experiments also investigate damage effects on electronics. A single neutron passing through a transistor is enough to change its performance.

For these shots, the targets from the inertial confinement fusion program are leveraged. NSA shots have used cryogenic, indirectly-driven capsules inside hohlraums to generate neutrons but also have used direct-drive capsules, which are directly impacted by the lasers, for simplicity in fielding.

Another advantage of using NIF is that very little debris is generated during a shot. This is especially important for an experiment using x rays to investigate how shocks are transmitted through a sample. The x rays from the target, followed by target debris, will hit the sample. Too much debris could obscure the signal from the x rays.

"NSA experiments are complex because they are atypical compared to the usual operations of NIF," says Blue. "The number of people who touch our experiments one way or another to make the shots happen is really quite immense. It takes the full NIF team. We couldn’t do it without everyone pulling together."