  The National Ignition Facility (NIF) currently under construction at the
University of California Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is a
192-beam, 1.8-megajoule, 500-terawatt, 351-nm laser for inertial confinement
fusion (ICF) and high-energy-density experimental studies. NIF is being built
by the Department of Energy and the National Nuclear Security Agency (NNSA) to
provide an experimental test bed for the U.S. Stockpile Stewardship Program to
ensure the country's nuclear deterrent without underground nuclear testing. The
experimental program will encompass a wide range of physical phenomena from
fusion energy production to materials science. Of the roughly 700 shots
available per year, about 10% will be dedicated to basic science research.
Laser hardware is modularized into line replaceable units (LRUs) such as
deformable mirrors, amplifiers, and multi-function sensor packages that are
operated by a distributed computer control system of nearly 60,000 control
points. The supervisory control room presents facility-wide status and
orchestrates experiments using operating parameters predicted by physics
models. A network of several hundred front-end processors (FEPs) implements
device control. The object-oriented software system is implemented in the Ada
and Java languages and emphasizes CORBA distribution of reusable software
objects. NIF is currently scheduled to provide first light in 2004 and will be
completed in 2008.
