LLNL, Livermore, California
The National Ignition Facility (NIF) is the world's highest-energy laser fusion system. The extensive operational tools suite includes experimental setup, pre-shot machine readiness, setup change management, machine health alerts, laser performance and optimization modeling, and a post-shot robotic optics inspection and analysis to guide refurbishment. For example, experiments are setup by a campaign management tool and laser model that allows principal investigators to flexibly define experimental goals. The facility machine readiness is assessed with a configuration checker application by comparing the planned experiment with the hardware operational status for each of NIF's 192 beams. In addition, a restriction manager records and classifies conditional use restrictions on sub-systems categorized by location and types. The experimental goals are algorithmically compared with these categorized restrictions. Machine health and safety control points are directly verified at shot time by the status verifier application which is independent of the supervisory control system. Examples of these and other operational tool requirements and implementations will be presented.
LLNL, Livermore, California
The National Ignition Facility (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. Completed in 2009, NIF is a stadium-sized facility containing a 1.8-MJ, 500-TW 192-beam ultraviolet laser and target chamber. A cryogenic tritium target system and suite of optical, X-ray and nuclear diagnostics will support experiments in a strategy to achieve fusion ignition starting in 2010. Automatic control of NIF is performed by the large-scale Integrated Computer Control System (ICCS), which is implemented by 2 MSLOC of Java and Ada running on 1300 front-end processors and servers. The ICCS framework uses CORBA distribution for interoperation between heterogeneous languages and computers. Laser setup is guided by a physics model and shots are coordinated by data-driven distributed workflow engines. The NIF information system includes operational tools and a peta-scale repository for provisioning experiment results. This talk discusses results achieved and the effort now underway to conduct full-scale operations and prepare for ignition.
