MOMAU009
LLNL, Livermore, California, USA
A Laser Inertial Fusion Energy (LIFE) facility point design is being developed at LLNL to support an Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) based energy concept. This will build upon the technical foundation of the National Ignition Facility (NIF), the world’s largest and most energetic laser system. NIF is designed to compress fusion targets to conditions required for thermonuclear burn. The LIFE control systems will have an architecture partitioned by sub-systems and distributed among over 1000’s of front-end processors, embedded controllers and supervisory servers. LIFE’s automated control subsystems will require interoperation between different languages and target architectures. Much of the control system will be embedded into the subsystem with well defined interface and performance requirements to the supervisory control layer. An automation framework will be used to orchestrate and automate start-up and shut-down as well as steady state operation. The LIFE control system will be a high parallel segmented architecture. For example, the laser system consists of 384 identical laser beamlines in a "box". The control system will mirror this architectural replication for each beamline with straightforward high-level interface for control and status monitoring. Key technical challenges will be discussed such as the injected target tracking and laser pointing feedback. This talk discusses the the plan for controls and information systems to support LIFE.
LLNL-CONF-476451
TUDAUST06
LLNL, Livermore, California, USA
The National Ignition Facility (NIF) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is a stadium-sized facility that will contains a 192-beam, 1.8-Megajoule, 500-Terawatt, ultraviolet laser system together with a 10-meter diameter target chamber with room for multiple experimental diagnostics. 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. NIF’s laser beams are designed to compress fusion targets to conditions required for thermonuclear burn. NIF is operated by the Integrated Computer Control System (ICCS) in an object-oriented, CORBA-based system distributed among over 1800 front-end processors, embedded controllers and supervisory servers. In the fall of 2010, a set of experiments began with deuterium and tritium filled targets as part of the National Ignition Campaign (NIC). At present, all 192 laser beams routinely fire to target chamber center to conduct fusion and high energy density experiments. During the past year, the control system was expanded to include automation of cryogenic target system and over 20 diagnostic systems to support fusion experiments were deployed and utilized in experiments in the past year. This talk discusses the current status of the NIC and the plan for controls and information systems to support these experiments on the path to ignition.
LLNL-CONF-475299