Performance Enhancements for the National Ignition Facility and Contributions to Inertial Fusion Energy

Introduction The National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Stockpile Stewardship Program’s (SSP) premier tool for High Energy Density (HED) Physics science, delivering data at levels of precision, pressure and temperature unparalleled in the world [1,2] and recently fusion experiments on the threshold of ignition [3]. With continued upgrades and plans for modest changes that would produce significant performance enhancements, the NIF will likely be the leading ICF facility for studying fusion ignition at full scale for at least another decade. Additionally, there are multiple areas of Inertial Fusion Energy (IFE) development where NIF can play an important role, ranging from testing of high gain advanced ignition schemes, to target chamber dynamics experiments, to materials damage, to Equation of State (EOS) studies of IFE-relevant materials (for target ablators or chamber walls) at extreme conditions, to data for the further development of code predictive capability. Furthermore, lessons from NIF in construction, operations, systems integration, and large facility architecture will provide a very useful steppingstone to any follow-on dedicated IFE facility.