LLNL, Livermore, California, USA
The National Ignition Facility (NIF) is the world’s most energetic laser system used for Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) and High Energy Density Physics (HEDP) experimentation. Each laser shot delivers up to 1.9 MJ of ultraviolet light, driving target temperatures to in excess of 180 million K and pressures 100 billion times atmospheric ’ making possible direct study of conditions mimicking interiors of stars and planets, as well as our primary scientific applications: stockpile stewardship and fusion power. NIF control and diagnostic systems allow physicists to precisely manipulate, measure and image this extremely dense and hot matter. A major focus in the past two years has been adding comprehensive new diagnostic instruments to evaluate increasing energy and power of the laser drive. When COVID-19 struck, the controls team leveraged remote access technology to provide efficient operational support without stress of on-site presence. NIF continued to mitigate inevitable technology obsolescence after 20 years since construction. In this talk, we will discuss successes and challenges, including NIF progress towards ignition, achieving record neutron yields in early 2021.
LLNL-ABS-821973
LLNL, Livermore, USA
The National Ignition Facility (NIF), the world’s most energetic laser, completed a multi-year project for migrating control software platforms from Ada to Java in 2019. Following that work, a technology refresh of NIF’s Digital Video (DVID) systems was identified as the next important step. The DVIDs were facing long-term maintenance risk due to its obsolete Window XP platform, with over 500 computers to be individually upgraded and patched, 24 camera types with a variety of I/O interfaces and proprietary drivers/software with their licensing needs. In this presentation, we discuss how we leveraged the strengths of NIF’s distributed, cross platform architecture and our system migration expertise to migrate the DVID platforms to diskless clients booting off a single purpose-built immutable Linux image, and replacing proprietary camera drivers with open-source drivers. The in-place upgrades with well-defined fallback strategies ensured minimal impact to the continuous 24/7 shot operations. We will also present our strategy for continuous build, test, and release of the Linux OS image to keep up with future security patches and package upgrades.
LLNL IM Document Release Number: LLNL-ABS-822092
LLNL, Livermore, California, USA
With the ability to deliver 2.1 MJ of 500 TW ultraviolet laser light to a target, the National Ignition Facility (NIF) is the world’s most energetic laser. This combination of energy and power allows the study of materials under conditions similar to the center of the sun. On fusion ignition experiments, plasma generated in the interior of the target shell can detrimentally impact the implosion symmetry and the resulting energy output. We are in the final stages of commissioning a significant new diagnostic system that will allow us to better understand the plasma conditions and improve our symmetry control techniques. This Optical Thompson Scattering (OTS) system consists of two major components: a probe laser beamline capable of delivering a world first 1 J of energy at 211 nm, and a diagnostic that both reflects the probe laser into the target and collects the scattered photons. Between these two components, the control system enhancements required integration of over 450 components into the existing automation suite. This talk will provide an overview of the system upgrade approach and the tools used to efficiently manage and test changes to both our data and software.