Invited Paper VT-WeM1
Architecture and Operation of the Z Pulsed Power Facility Vacuum System

Wednesday, October 20, 2010, 8:00 am, Room Laguna

The Z Pulsed Power Facility at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA is one of the world’s premier high energy density physics facilities. The Z Facility derives its name from the z-pinch phenomena which is a type of plasma confinement system that uses the electrical current in the plasma to generate a magnetic field that compresses it. Z refers to the direction of current flow, the z axis in a three dimensional Cartesian coordinate system. The multiterawatt, multimegajoule electrical pulse the Facility produces is 100-400 nanoseconds in time. Research and development programs currently being conducted on the Z Facility include inertial confinement fusion, dynamic material properties, laboratory astrophysics and radiation effects. The Z Facility vacuum system consists of two subsystems, center section and load diagnostics. Dry roughing pumps and cryogenic high vacuum pumps are used to evacuate the 40,000 liter, 200 square meter center section of the facility where the experimental load is located. Pumping times on the order of two hours are required to reduce the pressure from atmospheric to 10^-5 Torr. The center section is cycled from atmosphere to high vacuum for each experiment. The facility is capable of conducting one to two experiments per day. Numerous smaller vacuum pumping systems are used to evacuate load diagnostics. The megajoules of energy released during an experiment causes damage to the Facility that presents numerous challenges for reliable operation of the vacuum system.

Sandia is a multiprogram laboratory operated by Sandia Corporation, a Lockheed Martin Company, for the United States Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-AC04-94AL85000.