JASON Review; National Ignition Campaign Plan March 24-25, 2005

Livermore, CA: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 2005. Presumed First thus. Three Ring Binder. Very good. The binder includes Welcome Presentation to the JASON Review Committee by George Miller, NIF Associate Director, The National Ignition Facility: Ignition Program Overview by Edward Moses, NIF Ignition Physics Program by John Lindl, CEA target design for the LMJ by P. A. Holstein, NIF Laser Performance Status by Chris Haynam, Fabrication of NIF Ignition Targets, Production of NIF Ignition Targets by Abbas Nikroo, Status of Cryogenic Layering for NIF Ignition Targets, by J. D. Moody, The LASNEX and HYDRA ICF design codes (subset of unclassified viewgraphs) by Marty Marinak, Target Design and Implosions by Steve Haan, Los Alamos work toward the ignition point design by Doug Wilson, Experimental Plan Overview by Bruce Hammel, Fill Tubes by John Edwards, Shock Timing by David Meyerhofer, Hohlraum Energetics by Siegfried Glenzer, Present Understanding and Way Forward on Laser-Plasma Instability (LPI) Research: The LANL Perspective by Juan Fernandez, Progress Toward a Predictive Capability for Modeling Laser-Plasma Interactions by D. E. Hinkel, Hohlraum Symmetry by Otto Landen, 2w Physics by Larry Suter, NIF Cryogenic Target System (NCTS) by Jeff Williams and Target Diagnostics for Ignition by Brian MacGowan. Very few of these presentation to JASON study groups survive after the completion of the JASONs' review. This binder contains a plethora of substantive information in viewgraph form. 6 page listing of 51 Response to Recommendations dated 9/10/2008 inserted into pocket on the inside of the front of the binder. The National Ignition Campaign (NIC) was a multi-institution effort established under the National Nuclear Security Administration of DOE in 2005, prior to the completion of the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in 2009. The scope of the NIC was the planning and preparation for and the execution of the first 3 yr of ignition experiments (through the end of September 2012) as well as the development, fielding, qualification, and integration of the wide range of capabilities required for ignition. Besides the operation and optimization of the use of NIF, these capabilities included over 50 optical, x-ray, and nuclear diagnostic systems, target fabrication facilities, experimental platforms, and a wide range of NIF facility infrastructure. The goal of ignition experiments on the NIF is to achieve, for the first time, ignition and thermonuclear burn in the laboratory via inertial confinement fusion and to develop a platform for ignition and high energy density applications on the NIF. The goal of the NIC was to develop and integrate all of the capabilities required for a precision ignition campaign and, if possible, to demonstrate ignition and gain by the end of FY12. The goal of achieving ignition can be divided into three main challenges. The first challenge is defining specifications for the target, laser, and diagnostics with the understanding that not all ignition physics is fully understood and not all material properties are known. The second challenge is designing experiments to systematically remove these uncertainties. The third challenge is translating these experimental results into metrics designed to determine how well the experimental implosions have performed relative to expectations and requirements and to advance those metrics toward the conditions required for ignition. At project completion in 2009, NIF lacked almost all the diagnostics and infrastructure required for ignition experiments. About half of the 3 yr period covered in this review was taken up by the effort required to install and performance qualify the equipment and experimental platforms needed for ignition experiments. Ignition on the NIF is a grand challenge undertaking and the results presented here represent a snapshot in time on the path toward that goal. The path forward presented at the end of this review summarizes plans for the Ignition Campaign on the NIF, which were adopted at the end of 2012, as well as some of the key results obtained since the end of the NIC.

JASON is an independent group of elite scientists which advises the United States government on matters of science and technology, mostly of a sensitive nature. The group was first created as a way to get a younger generation of scientists-that is, not the older Los Alamos and MIT Radiation Laboratory alumni-involved in advising the government. It was established in 1960 and has somewhere between 30 and 60 members. Its work first gained public notoriety as the source of the Vietnam War's McNamara Line electronic barrier. Although most of its research is military-focused, JASON also produced early work on the science of global warming and acid rain. For administrative purposes, JASON's activities are run through the MITRE Corporation, a not-for-profit corporation in McLean, Virginia, which operates seven Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs) for the Federal Government of the United States.

JASON typically performs most of its work during an annual summer study. Its sponsors include the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, and the U.S. Intelligence Community. Most of the resulting JASON reports are classified. JASON studies have included a system for communicating with submarines using extremely long radio waves (Project Seafarer, Project Sanguine), an astronomical technique for overcoming the atmosphere's distortion (adaptive optics), the many problems of missile defense, technologies for verifying compliance with treaties banning nuclear tests, a 1979 report describing CO2-driven global warming, and the McNamara Line's electronic barrier, a system of computer-linked sensors developed during the Vietnam War which became the precursor to the modern electronic battlefield.