I am also gravely disappointed with the University of California and the . . . Lawrence Livermore Laboratory for its late reporting of these significant problems. All of this occurred a few days after Michael Campbell, the associate director of lasers at the lab and director of the NIF project, resigned. We've created a brand new directorate just for NIF, which was not in place a year ago. Physicist George Miller is the new associate director for NIF programs, and engineer Edward Moses is the NIF project manager.
Critics remain skeptical But many critics, including scientists, remain skeptical.
Stephen Bodner, a physicist who was the director of laser fusion research at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC, for 24 years, sees many scientific problems with the project, but believes NIF's troubled history comes from the culture of the lab. They know how bright and clever they are, and they'll sell things and try to get the job done. Until NIF shows some scientific success when its first bundle of eight lasers goes on line in 2004, bringing critics into the fold may be difficult. A phased 20-ns pulse from the lasers will compress and ignite the nuclear fuel in the capsule through inertial confinement fusion, releasing more energy than was added and simulating the conditions within a thermonuclear weapon. By simulating the effects of deterioration on aging warheads, NIF is intended to tell scientists if and when a bomb might no longer function.