Energy & Technology Review, December, 1994

28 cm, 61, [1] pages. Wraps. Illustrations (some color). Cover has some wear and soiling. This periodical was first published by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in April 1975 to communicate the Laboratory's scientific and technological accomplishments. The April 1995 issue of E&TR is the final issue under that name. In July, the publication resumed with a redesigned look and a new name, Science and Technology Review. This issue of E&TR is devoted to the National Ignition Facility (NIF). NIF is a large laser-based inertial confinement fusion (ICF) research device, located at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. NIF uses lasers to heat and compress a small amount of hydrogen fuel to the point where nuclear fusion reactions take place. NIF's mission is to support nuclear weapon maintenance and design by studying the behavior of matter under the conditions found within nuclear weapons. NIF is the largest laser in the world. A number of experiments were worked into the process under the National Ignition Campaign, with the goal of reaching ignition just after the laser reached full power. The Campaign officially ended in September 2012, at about 1/10 the conditions needed for ignition. Experiments since then have pushed this closer to 1/3. Since 2012, NIF has been used primarily for materials science and weapons research. This issue includes a conceptual walk-through of the then unconstructed experimental facility. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is an American federal research facility in Livermore, California, United States, founded by the University of California in 1952. A Federally Funded Research and Development Center (FFRDC), it is primarily funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and managed and operated by Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC (LLNS), a partnership of the University of California, Bechtel, BWX Technologies, AECOM, and Battelle Memorial Institute in affiliation with the Texas A&M University System. In 2012, the laboratory had the synthetic chemical element livermorium named after it. LLNL was established in 1952 as the University of California Radiation Laboratory at Livermore, an offshoot of the existing UC Radiation Laboratory at Berkeley. It was intended to spur innovation and provide competition to the nuclear weapon design laboratory at Los Alamos in New Mexico, home of the Manhattan Project that developed the first atomic weapons. Edward Teller and Ernest Lawrence,[2] director of the Radiation Laboratory at Berkeley, are regarded as the co-founders of the Livermore facility. The new laboratory was sited at a former naval air station of World War II. It was already home to several UC Radiation Laboratory projects that were too large for its location in the Berkeley Hills above the UC campus, including one of the first experiments in the magnetic approach to confined thermonuclear reactions (i.e. fusion). About half an hour southeast of Berkeley, the Livermore site provided much greater security for classified projects than an urban university campus. Lawrence tapped 32-year-old Herbert York, a former graduate student of his, to run Livermore. Under York, the Lab had four main programs: Project Sherwood (the Magnetic Fusion Program), Project Whitney (the weapons design program), diagnostic weapon experiments (both for the Los Alamos and Livermore laboratories), and a basic physics program. York and the new lab embraced the Lawrence "big science" approach, tackling challenging projects with physicists, chemists, engineers, and computational scientists working together in multidisciplinary teams. Lawrence died in August 1958 and shortly after, the university's board of regents named both laboratories for him, as the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory. Historically, the Berkeley and Livermore laboratories have had very close relationships on research projects, business operations and staff. The Livermore Lab was established initially as a branch of the Berkeley Laboratory.…