The Public Dedication of NIF and other Illusions

Open Letter to Editors: The Public Dedication of NIF and other Illusions

Recently the Director at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory announced the National Ignition Facility reached another project milestone 1 June 2009 when the facility was christened as "Certified". Various local newspapers reported the event with broad illuminations like these:

NIF Facility Dedication

The Certified NIF

NIF Opening Ceremony

NIF Official Opening

NIF was Unveiled

NIF Laser Commissioned Beam Lines

“Tests are about to start”

“Like the dedication of a Cathedral”

“The worlds most powerful laser is almost ready for use”

The Director of LLNL further claims the NIF is designed to achieve nuclear fusion ignition. To substantiate that claim the project leadership is obligated to produce documentation to actualize that claim. They are obligated to produce requirements and specifications as a guide to assure the project meets stated objectives in the specifications. They are also obligated to specify measurable criteria for determining success or failure of the stated objectives. The documents are minimally these:

* documents containing requirements and specifications from the customer DOE;
* documents containing results from qualification tests and system level tests;
* documented results from validation and verification tests to show the NIF subsystem under test is performing to meet written requirements.

The project is also accountable for our public funds spent, now six times the original estimate.

Vital elements of the NIF remain undisclosed at the dedication ceremony. If a NIF subsystem cannot be demonstrated as viable, there is no justification for proceeding with full scale development unless your motives are deceptive to both financiers and the Customer.

* A jump to build NIF without substantial proof of concept is unjustified
* Nova was the last subscale laser to support NIF and it was a flop
* Omega is the most recent subscale (HEPW) laser but does not support NIF as proof of concept, NIF would require upgrades to HEPW lasers to be relevant.
* The Laser MegaJoule (LMJ) in France is based on a subscale laser called the Ligne d'Int\'{e}gration Laser'' (LIL), this is the proof of concept for LMJ. NIF was constructed intentionally without a subscale laser.
* No Lab director has ever confessed the true state of the NIF ICCS (Integrated Computer Control System). In the absence of a Verified ICCS the NIF building complex is merely a concrete façade.
* Documentation for requirements and specifications are suspiciously missing from the public archives, the latest documents are vintage 1996, 13 years ago.
* Documentation for qualification test results are also missing from the public archives yet the rhetoric from this program boasts “commissioned beam lines”.
* Internal documents record commissioning the laser Quad, what do they say?

Current peer review articles and papers from scientific journals are available on-line from websites at LLNL, The Mitre Corporation (Jason Report), and federal government agencies. These articles show an end-to-end laser beam line had not been built much less qualified, and will not be commissioned in time for “testing in 2010”, recall the phrase “The World’s most powerful laser is almost ready for use”. The true context of this public statement is now apparent.

* When completing the latest review of NIF, the 2005 Jason report mentions only the Diagnostics subsystems, other critical laser subsystems were omitted. Critical subsystems are ICCS, LRU's, Switchyard, Final Optics, TARPOS, TASPOS. Critical systems issues are timing constraints, power levels, and contamination.
* https://lasers.llnl.gov/publications/journal_articles.php On this NIF website are 23 technical papers considered by LLNL as journal quality articles for the period 2005 to 2008. Only a meager 2 of the articles overview NIF qualification or address its subsystems. The first article for 2008 is titled "The National Ignition Facility 2007 Laser Performance".

- From the article: “In 2006 and 2007, a series of measurements were performed on the NIF laser, at both 1ω and 3ω (351 nm). When scaled to full 192-beam operation, these results lend confidence to the claim that NIF will meet its laser performance design criteria…" Note the conclusion is reached by pure speculation that performance criteria will be met through scaling not testing.

- Again from " The National Ignition Facility 2007 Laser Performance " has 22 contributing authors but is only 7 pages long

* The text further reads Laser Bay 2 has been qualified 100% and Laser Bay 1 is nearly complete, yet Table 1 shows only 2 percent of the Target Bay installed, only 24 percent of the Switchyard is installed. So Qualified as used in the text means only a component of the beam line is "qualified", not an end to end system test since the hardware for an end to end test was not built.
* These hyperbole are typical exaggeration boasted by NIF management throughout the duration of this program.

Another paper titled "Generating powerful ultraviolet beams with the Worlds largest laser" cites commissioning of a four laser beam Quad. This paper was published in 2006 but cites a single Quad commissioned during the Early Light event back in 2004 as another milestone. So no further Quads were commissioned since 2004? There are 48 bundles of Quads with four beams each to complete 192 beams. If beam operations are planned for 2009 when were the remaining 47 Quads commissioned? Some excerpts from this paper:

- "The frequency converted performance of the NIF laser has been tested and verified in a series of experimental campaigns referred to as NIF Early Light (ref 6). These campaigns, conducted between Nov 2002 and Sept 2004, included the first NIF target experiments utilizing one Quad of beams on the target chamber,"

From these tests for a single quad ( 4 beams) in 2004, the authors draw this conclusion

- "Installation and commissioning of the National Ignition Facility is proceeding on, or slightly ahead of schedule for the planned start of full 192-beam operations in 2009, and the first ignition campaign in 2010.

There are many editorials about the purpose of NIF and the claims the facility will perform to some objective criteria, one among the following: Stockpile Stewardship, Ignition, astrophysical hydrodynamics, carbon free energy from sea water). To establish the validity of those claims the reviewer need only critique the quality and quantity of peer review papers produced by this program available in public archives (dot gov dot org). The evidence in those documents falls far short of the performance claims.

The purpose of building NIF is to secure federal funding to sustain it financially year after year.

The object of LLNL public relations and marketing this project is to build public perception that NIF is worthwhile Science. See ‘purpose’ previous.

The Fusion Problem was also addressed in 1993 when the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) was abandoned. $2B dollars had already been spent and escalating costs of $12B was enough for the Clinton Administration to cancel the program in favor of better science conducted elsewhere. A summary of the SSC in Texas:

* $12B estimated project costs the SSC in Waxahachie, Texas
* $2B spent on the Superconducting Super Collider, then project canceled
* Scientists were looking for the Higgs Boson (The God Particle), a consequence of high energy particle collisions when anticipating particle fusion

Is the NIF just another Super Collider Déjà Vu?

The rhetoric used by LLNL when selling the NIF is not unlike that used for the SSC during its construction. Here are excerpts from articles written about the SSC:

* The "Desertron" (named by Professor Lederman of Colombia ) would be the largest single scientific instrument in the world
* Employ a staff of two thousand people … and various properly awestruck visiting scholars from overseas.
* 20 times mo’ powerful than Fermilab
* 60 times mo’ powerful than CERN circa 1982
* The accelerator’s 54 miles of deep tunnels … the size of Washington Beltway.
* The cost estimated at 3 billion dollars
* The goal of the Desertron, or at least its target of choice, would be the Higgs scalar boson (The God Particle), although its true nature is very much in doubt.
* The Higgs boson would be a glittering prize indeed, though not so glittering as the gigantic lab itself.

15 years ago the SSC shared similar “scientific goals” as the NIF does today.

* The particle collisions are expected to mimic conditions that prevailed during creation of the universe.
* Scientists hope to record the resulting smaller particles and bursts of energy and study them for clues to the fundamental structure of all matter.
* The purpose of SSC is to enhance the scientific understanding of the building blocks of matter.

Without serious re-direction and accountability of taxpayer dollars, the NIF might also suffer the same fate as SSC. NIF will also be archived and recorded as a project poorly planned, overbuilt, over budget, and missing its objectives.

For a more critical view of the NIF and LLNL, reporters should contact people who have work experience at LLNL. To build a balanced perspective of the NIF, journalists should contact Les Miklosy, David Lappa, Luciana Messina, Mathew Zipoli, Robert Civiak, Christopher Paine, Marylia Kelly, Andreas Toupadakis or Stephen Bodner.

Personal note: I am a consulting Mechanical Engineer with 25 years of working experience in the high-tech industry. I am a former employee of Lawrence Livermore Laboratories on the National Ignition Facility. I was hired at LLNL in 2002 as Computer Scientist to develop components for the Integrated Computer Control System (ICCS), a critical software control component of the NIF.

I supported the NIF program for one year when I was aggressively fired and removed from LLNL for asking too many embarrassing questions from NIF managers about specifying engineering requirements for my assignment. I sought a resolution for the Lab’s draconian reprisal and a legal remedy for my dismissal. I am labeled a Whistleblower as a consequence of the publicity and legal proceedings.

These managers who support NIF could never find a job in competitive Industry, consequently they will remain at the Lab forever secured in their dictatorial regime. I fully concur with David Lappa, the managers who dictate the LLNL NIF are Scumbags. Taken collectively they are a band of opportunistic Thugs.