"New Results from the National Ignition Facility", Dr. John Lindl, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Since completion of the NIF construction project in March 2009, a wide variety of diagnostics, facility infrastructure, and experimental platforms have been qualified. NIF reached its design goal of 1.8 MJ and 500 TW of ultraviolet light in 2012. The Ignition Campaign on the NIF is making steady progress toward achieving ignition. Utilizing precision pulse-shaping, experiments demonstrated the ability to achieve fuel densities of 600-800 g/cm3 along with neutron yields within about a factor of 5 of that required for entering the regime of strong alpha particle heating. Experimental platforms have been developed that enable the optimization of the key attributes of an ICF implosion: Velocity (kinetic energy), Adiabat (compressibility), Shape (deviation from 1D spherical symmetry), and Mix (hydrodynamic instability). Experiments are being carried out to further optimize each of these key attributes as the NIC moves toward the conditions in compressed DT required for ignition.