Fusion Power Associates Honors LLNL’s Bruno Van Wonterghem

NIF Operations Manager Bruno Van Wonterghem was awarded a 2024 Distinguished Career Award by Fusion Power Associates (FPA).

The FPA Board of Directors recognized Van Wonterghem “for his decades of tenacious dedication to scientific and operational excellence in bringing both the LLNL Beamlet and NIF facilities to completion and successful operations. The Board especially notes his many scientific publications contributing to understanding laboratory inertial confinement fusion (ICF) and his managerial expertise that has enabled thousands of groundbreaking laser-plasma experiments.”

“It’s an honor to be recognized by Fusion Power Associates,” Van Wonterghem said. “I’ve spent almost my entire career at the Lab on inertial confinement fusion. To have my dream, my inspiration for pursuing a career in lasers come true when we achieved fusion ignition on NIF, is amazing. Just beyond words.”

Ignition, first achieved at LLNL during a NIF experiment on Dec. 5, 2022, created more fusion energy than the amount of laser energy used to spark the reaction. This breakthrough has provided new opportunities for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s stockpile stewardship applications and enhances the prospects for a fusion energy future.

“Ignition is a watershed moment in the history of science,” said Jeff Wisoff, principal associate director of the National Ignition Facility and Photon Science (NIF&PS) Directorate at LLNL. “It would not have been possible without Bruno’s tenacious dedication to scientific and operational excellence.”

E. Michael Campbell was the other recipient of the FPA 2024 Distinguished Career Award. He was previously the LLNL associate director of Laser Programs (later NIF&PS) and played a foundational role in the conceptualization of NIF. Campbell also held leadership roles at the University of Rochester and General Atomics, among other accomplishments.

“To receive this award alongside Mike Campbell makes it even better, as he hired me into the LLNL Laser Program in 1992 to work on NIF,” Van Wonterghem said.

A native of Belgium, Van Wonterghem received his Ph.D. in physical chemistry at the University of Leuven in Belgium. He did a postdoc at the University of California, Irvine, and was a visiting researcher at the Max Plank Institute in Germany. In 1992, he came to LLNL working under Campbell on the Beamlet Demonstration Project as the NIF project was stood up.

Beamlet was a near full-scale prototype for what would become NIF’s laser architecture, including a cost-effective multipass design using square beams. During NIF design and construction, Van Wonterghem introduced and tested significant improvements like spatial, temporal, phase, and wavefront control.

“An amazing part of working at LLNL was that people gave me incredible challenges,” he said. “They instilled confidence in me that I could do things that had never been done before. At LLNL, no matter what problem you are trying to solve, there is always someone knowledgeable to turn to and help you make it happen.”

Building NIF and seeing the lasers come to life with the first experiments in June 2009 was a high point in Van Wonterghem’s career. Thanks to the experience gained on Beamlet, the NIF laser commissioning went smoothly.

“We soon realized that a great laser experimental facility alone was not enough, when ignition did not happen within a few years as many had expected,” he said.

A decade of returning to scientific discovery, careful experimentation, and building up new lasers, targets, and diagnostic capabilities to achieve the level of precision required to answer key ignition questions followed. This effort ultimately led to LLNL achieving ignition on NIF in December 2022. NIF experiments have since repeated the accomplishment multiple times.

“The first ignition was both expected and unexpected. In my heart, I always knew we would get there, but it required ultimate perfection from the target and the laser. This facility was designed so well, and the team working on it was so skilled and motivated,” Van Wonterghem said.

In his role as operations manager, Van Wonterghem provides exacting oversight of all aspects of NIF safety, security, quality, and efficiency—no small task in a 24/7 facility conducting as many as 400 experiments each year. While his responsibilities remain the same as they did prior to achieving ignition, the feat has changed his outlook.

“Now that the capability to achieve ignition in the laboratory has been demonstrated and repeated, I want to see how high we can fly and how fast we can go,” Van Wonterghem said.

He sees his role as constantly pushing to improve the facility’s performance, while working with users to ensure NIF provides the highest quality capability to execute the best possible experiments to meet the primary mission of stockpile stewardship. This means achieving higher yield in NIF’s current configuration through sustainment, a set of key refurbishment and recapitalization activities now under way, and potential upgrades that could further expand NIF’s capability to reach much higher laser performance levels.

He’s also looking forward to what could be NIF’s successor—a next-generation ICF facility that would leverage the significant technological advances attained since NIF was designed and built. Such a facility, which could be capable of yields in the 100s of megajoules, could further LLNL’s capability to support the stockpile and modernization in the absence of testing and continue to advance scientific understanding of ignition.

“Inspiring the team and the next generation to continue the tradition of innovation and excellence to achieve the next dream is what motivates me. Looking forward, I want to see applications of ignition come true in my life,” he said.

The awards will be presented in December at the Fusion Power Associates 45th Annual Meeting and Symposium in Washington, D.C. Constantin Haefner, another former LLNL colleague, will receive a 2024 Leadership Award. Currently the managing director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology ILT, Haefner was director of the Advanced Photon Technologies Program at LLNL until 2019.

The FPA Distinguished Career Awards have been given annually since 1987 to recognize individuals who have made distinguished lifelong career contributions to fusion energy development FPA Leadership Awards have been given annually since 1980 to recognize individuals who have shown outstanding leadership qualities in accelerating the development of fusion as a commercial power source. See a list of previous recipients.

More information:

“Safety Society Honors NIF's Bruno Van Wonterghem,” NIF & Photon Science News, September 6, 2023

“Operations Manager Keeps NIF Trekking,” NIF & Photon Science Website

Follow us on X: @lasers_llnl