IUVSTA 15th International Vacuum Congress (IVC-15), AVS 48th International Symposium (AVS-48), 11th International Conference on Solid Surfaces (ICSS-11)
    Vacuum Science & Technology Friday Sessions
       Session VST-FrM

Paper VST-FrM7
Design of the NIF Spatial Filter Vacuum System

Friday, November 2, 2001, 10:20 am, Room 132

Session: Accelerators Technology, Fusion Machines & Gravitational Wave Detectors
Presenter: J.D. Hitchcock, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Authors: J.D. Hitchcock, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
J.M. Bowers, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
P.J. Densley, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
C.E. Karlsen, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
H.G. Patton, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
J.R. Reed, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
J.W. Weed, Sandia National Laboratories
Correspondent: Click to Email
The National Ignition Facility (NIF) is a Department of Energy inertial confinement fusion facility. The goal of the facility is to achieve fusion ignition and modest energy gain in the laboratory. The multi billion dollar NIF project is responsible for t he design and construction of the 192 beam, 1.8MJ laser necessary to meet this goal. The NIF is a national project with participation by LLNL, LANL, SNL, URLLE and numerous industrial partners. The NIF spatial filter vacuum system will provide 10@SUPER-4@ torr or less to each of 48 individually pumped volumes for a total of 3.3 x 10@SUPER6@ liters. These volumes involve 2300 tons of stainless steel vessels and connecting beam tubes. The spatial filters are clean room rated to MIL STD 1246C level 83 - A/1 0 and the total internal surface area, excluding internal components, is 22,500 sq. m. The system design has been completed and the vessels are installed in the NIF laser bays. Installation of the beam tubes and vacuum pumping equipment is in progress w it h initial operations beginning in July 2002. The pumping system consists of magnetically levitated turbo molecular drag pumps and redundant, "dry" vessel roughing and turbo backing pump skids. Controls, auto sequencing, data archiving, trending, inter l ock s and alarm functions will be provided by programmable logic controllers. Gauging includes total pressure with provisions for partial pressure and leak detection measurements. The hardware, instrumentation, design criteria and performance goals will be described. This work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by the University of California, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract No. W-7405-Eng-48.