page_title: National Ignition Facility
section_title: National Ignition Campaign
hierarchical_section_title: National Ignition Facility / Operations / National Ignition Campaign
caption_attribution_description: English: Before each experiment at the National Ignition Facility (NIF), a positioner precisely centers the target inside the 10-meter diameter target chamber and serves as a reference to align the laser beams. NIF is located at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in northern California.
context_page_description: The National Ignition Facility, is a large laser-based inertial confinement fusion research device, located at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California. NIF uses lasers to heat and compress a small amount of hydrogen fuel with the goal of inducing nuclear fusion reactions. NIF's mission is to achieve fusion ignition with high energy gain, and to support nuclear weapon maintenance and design by studying the behavior of matter under the conditions found within nuclear weapons. NIF is the largest and most energetic ICF device built to date, and the largest laser in the world.
  The basic concept of all ICF devices is to rapidly collapse a small amount of fuel so the pressure and temperature reach fusion-relevant conditions. NIF does this by heating the outer layer of a small plastic sphere with the world's most powerful laser. The energy from the laser is so intense that it causes the plastic to explode, squeezing down on the fuel inside. The speed of this process is enormous, with the fuel reaching a peak around 350 km/s, raising the density from about that of water to about 100 times that of lead.
context_section_description: With the main construction complete, NIF started working on the "National Ignition Campaign" (NIC), the quest to reach ignition. By this time, so sure were the experimenters that ignition would be reached that articles began appearing in science magazines stating that it would be announced only a short time after the article was published. Scientific American started a 2010 review article with the statement "Ignition is close now. Within a year or two..."
  The first test was carried out on 8 October 2010 at slightly over 1 MJ. However, a number of problems slowed the drive toward ignition-level laser energies in the 1.4 to 1.5 MJ range.
  Progress was initially slowed by the potential for damage from overheating due to a concentration of energy on optical components that is greater than anything previously attempted. Other issues included problems layering the fuel inside the targets, and minute quantities of dust being found on the capsule surface.
  As the power was increased and targets of increasing sophistication were used, another problem appeared that was causing an asymmetric implosion. This was eventually traced to minute amounts of water vapor in the target chamber which froze to the windows on the ends of the hohlraums. This was solved by re-designing the hohlraum with two layers of glass on either end, in effect creating a storm window. Steven Koonin, DOE undersecretary for science, visited the lab for an update on the NIC on 23 April, the day after the window problem was announced as solved. On 10 March he had described the NIC as "a goal of overriding importance for the DOE" and expressed that progress to date "was not as rapid as I had hoped".
  NIC shots halted in February 2011, as the machine was turned over to SSMP materials experiments. As these experiments wound down, a series of planned upgrades were carried out, notably a series of improved diagnostic and measurement instruments. Among these changes were the addition of the ARC (Advanced Radiographic Capability) system, which uses 4 of the NIF's 192 beams as a backlighting source for high-speed imaging of the implosion sequence.
  ARC is essentially a petawatt-class laser with peak power exceeding a quadrillion (10¹⁵) watts. It is designed to produce brighter, more penetrating, higher-energy x rays than can be obtained with conventional radiographic techniques. When complete, ARC will be the world's highest-energy short-pulse laser, capable of creating picosecond-duration laser pulses to produce energetic x rays in the range of 50-100 keV for backlighting NIF experiments.
  NIC runs restarted in May 2011 with the goal of timing the four laser shock waves that compress the fusion target to very high precision. The shots tested the symmetry of the X-ray drive during the first three nanoseconds. Full-system shots fired in the second half of May achieved unprecedented peak pressures of 50 megabars.
  In January 2012, Mike Dunne, director of NIF's laser fusion energy program, predicted in a Photonics West 2012 plenary talk that ignition would be achieved at NIF by October 2012. In the same month, the NIF fired a record high of 57 shots, more than in any month up to that point. On March 15, 2012, NIF produced a laser pulse with 411 trillion watts of peak power. On July 5, 2012, it produced a shorter pulse of 1.85 MJ and increased power of 500 TW.
caption: Technician works on target positioner inside National Ignition Facility (NIF) target chamber.
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "NIF Livermore July 2008", "Image Make": "NIKON CORPORATION", "Image Model": "NIKON D3", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "240", "Image YResolution": "240", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS3 Macintosh", "Image DateTime": "2009:09:21 10:54:49", "Image Artist": "Philip Saltonstall", "Image ExifOffset": "284", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "918", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5836", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/10", "EXIF FNumber": "9", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Manual", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "200", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2008:07:07 16:12:58", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2008:07:07 16:12:58", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "415241/125000", "EXIF ApertureValue": "126797/20000", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "-1", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "3", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Spot", "EXIF LightSource": "Tungsten (incandescent light)", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "14", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "41", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "41", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "4256", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2499", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CVAPattern": "[2, 0, 2, 0, 0, 1, 1, 2]", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Manual Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Manual", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "14", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "None", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0"}