LLNL-Led Team Receives DOE Award to Establish Inertial Fusion Energy Hub

The Energy Department awarded a four-year, $16 million project to a multi-institutional team led by LLNL to accelerate IFE science and technology. This effort will be carried out by a newly established hub named STARFIRE.

Engineering Divisions Provide Expertise to Support Fusion Energy’s Future

LLNL's National Security Engineering Division and Defense Technologies Engineering Division have long histories of providing infrastructure for NIF's operations.

Milestone Shot Enhances Future of Stockpile Stewardship and Fusion Energy Science

Part 7: Two fields that stand to gain from NIF’s record shot are stockpile stewardship science and the quest for inertial fusion energy.

Video: ‘The Threshold of Ignition’

In a video, LLNL’s Kim Budil, Jeff Wisoff, and Brad Wallin discuss how NIF’s historic 1.3 megajoule milestone is important for science and our nation’s nuclear and energy security.

High-Quality Diamond Capsule Enhanced NIF’s Record-Energy Shot

Fourth in a series of articles describing the elements of the National Ignition Facility’s 1.3-megajoule experiment.

Building to a Solution: The Elements of a Fusion Breakthrough

First in a series of articles describing aspects of the National Ignition Facility’s record-breaking 1.3-megajoule experiment.

Fusion Supports the Stockpile

To support the NNSA’s Stockpile Stewardship Program, weapon designers, experimentalists, and engineers turn to platforms of immense energy and engineering prowess such as NIF.

NIF’s Laser Energy Will Test Nuclear Survivability in Space

What would happen to a ballistic missile interceptor or a space reentry vehicle if they encountered a nuclear explosion above the Earth’s atmosphere? That’s a question U.S. and United Kingdom defense planners hope to answer with the help of a new NIF capability now under development.

COVID-19 Protocols Keep NIF on Track

The health and safety protocols that let NIF resume experiments shortly after regional COVID-19 shelter-in-place directives took effect remain in place, helping NIF maintain a regular slate of experiments that are essential to national security.

Experiments Resume at the National Ignition Facility

NIF has resumed mission-critical experiments after LLNL reduced operations in March due to COVID-19. These experiments are essential for support of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Stockpile Stewardship Program.

STAR Array Tests Materials’ Response to Strong X-ray Shocks

At first glance it might be mistaken for a model of the Millennium Falcon of “Star Wars” fame. But it’s actually a new radiation-effects diagnostic that nearly triples the number of material samples that can be exposed to x rays in a single NIF shot.

Energetic Laser Helps Test Weapon Survivability

In the absence of nuclear testing, high energy density facilities such as NIF have become a key tool for testing the survivability of nuclear weapon components under hostile conditions, such as those that could result from a pre-emptive strike by an adversary, or when a conventional war may be fought in a nuclear environment.

Firing up NIF for National Security Applications

National Security Applications experiments investigate the survivability of sensitive weapon and other components exposed to a wide variety of extreme environments.

NIF Tops 400 Shots in Fiscal Year 2016

NIF performed its 400th experiment of fiscal year (FY) 2016 on Sept. 18, meeting the year’s goal several weeks early. In comparison, the facility completed 356 experiments in FY15 and 191 experiments in FY14. NIF is on track to complete 415 experiments by the end of the fiscal year, more than doubling its FY14 accomplishments. NIF, the world’s largest and most energetic laser, is funded by...

Testing Neutron Effects on Electronics

As part of NIF’s National Security Applications mission, LLNL researchers are working with Sandia National Laboratories colleagues to develop a neutron effects platform on NIF aimed at helping determine the survivability of non-nuclear weapon system components in hostile radiation environments.

NIF Experiments Help Validate Electromagnetic Pulse Codes

An important element of NIF’s National Security Applications mission is helping validate simulation codes designed to determine the effects of system-generated electromagnetic pulses (SGEMP) on various materials. The NIF Team conducted three experiments for the campaign, which is led by Sandia National Laboratories and the UK’s Atomic Weapons Establishment).

Controlling Hydrodynamic Mixing in NIF Implosions

While it’s true that oil and water don’t mix—unless you add detergent—the same unfortunately isn’t true for the target capsule material and the fusion fuel in NIF inertial confinement fusion (ICF) experiments. In fact, one of the most significant challenges to achieving ignition on NIF has been understanding and controlling the growth of mixing caused by hydrodynamic instability, a type of...

High-Foot Team Receives NNSA Defense Programs Award of Excellence

Don Cook, deputy administrator for Defense Programs at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), presented a NNSA Defense Programs Award of Excellence on Oct. 31 to the team that developed and conducted the high-foot experiments on NIF that produced record energy yields in Fiscal Year 2014. The High-Foot team was cited for "developing and demonstrating on NIF an indirectly driven...

Demand Grows for NIF’s Versatile X-ray Spectrometer

Researchers are enthusiastic to take advantage of the recently commissioned NIF X-ray Spectrometer (NXS) for a variety of new time-resolved, high-resolution spectroscopic experiments on NIF.

July Experimental Highlights

The NIF Team completed 19 target shots and 4 laser shots in July. Target shots were distributed as follows: High Energy Density (HED) Stewardship Science 8; Ignition 7; Discovery Science 1; National Security 2; Facility 1. Here are some additional highlights: On June 30 and July 1, the team conducted two complex hydrodynamics crystal ball shock breakout (SBO) measurements. The shots measured...