https://www.llnl.gov/news/newsreleases/2013/Dec/NR-13-12-07.html#.UsZnuMu9KSM
Oh, there are going to be some great PRL's and awards down the line!
Oh, don't tell anyone about the 2 MJ point design that had a million man hours of work in it. Shhh
Tri-Valley Cares needs to be on this if they aren't already. We need to make sure that NNSA and LLNL does not make good on promises to pursue such stupid ideas as doing Plutonium experiments on NIF. The stupidity arises from the fact that a huge population is placed at risk in the short and long term. Why do this kind of experiment in a heavily populated area? Only a moron would push that kind of imbecile area. Do it somewhere else in the god forsaken hills of Los Alamos. Why should the communities in the Bay Area be subjected to such increased risk just because the lab's NIF has failed twice and is trying the Hail Mary pass of doing an SNM experiment just to justify their existence? Those Laser EoS techniques and the people analyzing the raw data are all just BAD anyways. You know what comes next after they do the experiment. They'll figure out that they need larger samples. More risk for the local population. Stop this imbecilic pursuit. They wan...
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http://nnsa.energy.gov/mediaroom/pressreleases/2013accomplishments
The 3rd bullet lists the artificial retina.
If you click on the link in the 4th bullet you'll see the 2013 R&D awards where LLNL is listed.
Now none of that fixes the NIF 14 kjoule "grand" accomplishment, but LLNL still continues to provide interesting and useful discoveries and technologies despite the albatross of NIF.
Indeed, artificial sight is a most worthy goal -- good luck springing bucks to pursue it from that big dude down the road.