National Ignition Facility Project Completion and Control System Status

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) is the world's largest and most energetic laser experimental system providing a scientific center to study inertial confinement fusion (ICF) and matter at extreme energy densities and pressures. Completed in 2009, NIF is a stadium-sized facility containing a 1.8-MJ, 500-TW 192-beam ultraviolet laser and target chamber. A cryogenic tritium target system and suite of optical, X-ray and nuclear diagnostics will support experiments in a strategy to achieve fusion ignition starting in 2010. Automatic control of NIF is performed by the large-scale Integrated Computer Control System (ICCS), which is implemented by 2 MSLOC of Java and Ada running on 1300 front-end processors and servers. The ICCS framework uses CORBA distribution for interoperation between heterogeneous languages and computers. Laser setup is guided by a physics model and shots are coordinated by data-driven distributed workflow engines. The NIF information system includes operational tools and a peta-scale repository for provisioning experimental results. This paper discusses results achieved and the effort now underway to conduct full-scale operations and prepare for ignition.