Skip to main content

ICF review this summer?

Image
By
Is anyone aware of the big ICF review this summer? Supposedly it's going to decide the future of the program. Usual suspects from Omega, Z, and NIF.

Comments

Anonymous said…
The panel conclusion will be: ICF is making great progress, new sane people are in charge at the NIF and Moses is gone, groundbreaking experiments at NIF and Z are reinvigorating the field, and look how close they are! Keep the money flowing, all three key lab directors think you should and we do too.
6/09/2015 6:41 PM
Anonymous said…
There was a big whoop-tee-do ICF/HED Program Review at the Forrestal Building last month from May 18-20. Lots of names that people on this list would recognize. Lots of presentations given. Lots of plans outlined; "deep dives" will now happen and there will be subcommittees writing reports. Lots of vu-graphs shown, including one that begins with, "Progress toward ignition" and, then, at the bottom, says, "You are performing a valuable service to the program and to the Nation..." A workshop is now planned in spring 2016. Keep the money coming.
6/11/2015 5:07 PM
Anonymous said…
Did Dr. Vic Reis show up with his laser pointer stating, "who say's lasers don't work"?
6/11/2015 7:43 PM
Anonymous said…
No, but he did say something about the same old day-in and day-out safety and security issues at LANL.
6/11/2015 8:10 PM
Anonymous said…
Let's see how long it takes for the guy that sleeps with Reis to complain about why everyone is picking on his sweatheart Viccy.
6/12/2015 3:31 PM
Anonymous said…
Reis is a has been.
6/13/2015 8:24 AM
Anonymous said…
Someone should have played the Peggy Lee song "Is That All There Is?" at the meeting. For you Livermore people, Peggy Lee is a famous singer from the 50's. Google it after your bike ride today.

I still can't understand how the NIF EOS stuff persists after all the blatant fabrication (See Ta phase transition at 3 Mbar).
6/13/2015 4:30 PM
Anonymous said…

As Vic Reis said, it is day in and day out safety and security incidents and LANL. I do not know when he said that, I do not know if he said that, no I know has ever heard Vic Reis say, and it doe not sound like Reis that but nonetheless we must say he said that. It is ironic since Vic Reis actually seems to be a very strong supporter of LANL and said that the the prioritization of the LANL and the labs in general is "an experiment that has been tried and failed." He sounds like one of the good guys.
6/13/2015 10:08 PM
Anonymous said…
Today I looked at all the abject garbage being published by the NIF people - diamond ablators, thinner high-foot capsules, thinner tents, rugby holoraums, picket temperature drive, etc. They probably have another 50 years of doing this excrement.
6/15/2015 6:04 PM
Anonymous said…
They probably have another 50 years of doing this excrement.
June 15, 2015 at 6:04 PM

That is exactly the point!!! The worst disaster that could befall the national ICF program is for anyone to reach ignition and breakeven, however that is defined. It has to always remain 5 years away, just out of reach.
6/15/2015 7:23 PM
Anonymous said…


Today I looked at all the abject garbage being published by the NIF people - diamond ablators, thinner high-foot capsules, thinner tents, rugby holoraums, picket temperature drive, etc. They probably have another 50 years of doing this excrement.

June 15, 2015 at 6:04 PM

And who are you to judge?
6/15/2015 7:43 PM
Anonymous said…
And who are you to judge?
June 15, 2015 at 7:43 PM

Is that how the NIF people respond to the people that review their painfully stupid and irrelevant articles?
6/16/2015 9:21 AM
Anonymous said…
NIF publications appear to be reviewed by sycophants that wouldn't be able to teach a high school science class.
6/16/2015 9:16 PM
Anonymous said…
I suspect that the NIF people have their papers reviewed by the Omega gang, and visa versa. Total circle jerk.
6/17/2015 4:52 AM
Anonymous said…
Last I checked the Omega gang thought that indirect drive (i.e. holhraums) would fail and fault the NIF program for not pursuing a joint direct/indirect drive effort. But they know they're in bed with us so they can't complain so much.
6/18/2015 10:42 PM
Anonymous said…
Well, it looks like the Omega gang was right on the money! They called it, and data proves it; NIF hohlraums suck, not ignite. Go, Rochester!
6/19/2015 2:59 PM
Anonymous said…
Unfortunately, the modifications to NIF to be able to field a successful direct drive campaign at 1 ~ 2 MJ in the UV are prohibitively expensive. Most of the beam ports have to be moved on the target chamber (for symmetry reasons), 192 new frequency tripling crystals at the 40 x 40 cm aperture are required (to be used with the existing 384 doublers and triplers), a significantly modified laser oscillator system (front-end) required to provide >300 GHz of spectral bandwidth at the 1 micron fundamental (> 1 THz in the UV), new continuous phase plates for much larger and flatter focal spots, etc...The compromise is called Polar Direct Drive, which could be fielded on the existing NIF (for $50 M ?), but in my opinion would not likely work any better than the current indirect drive approach, due to LPI and hydro instabilities at the target interface. Besides I don't think we know how to field "cryo" targets in true direct drive.
6/19/2015 9:56 PM
Anonymous said…
And countless billions more to spend. Direct drive has a set of problems, but different ones from what indirect drive faces. Maybe they are easier to solve, maybe not. But if there is a winner (it is not clear there is any path to ICF ignition and gain that does not use a nuclear bomb as a driver), it will probably be whatever is easiest to diagnose and tune, and that is probably not indirect drive.
6/21/2015 4:14 PM
Anonymous said…
Fusion: Mad Science
6/25/2015 6:31 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Plutonium Shots on NIF.

By scooby
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...
155 comments
Read more

Trump is to gut the labs.

By scooby
The budget has a 20% decrease to DOE office of science, 20% cut to NIH. NASA also gets a cut. This will  have a huge negative effect on the lab. Crazy, juts crazy. He also wants to cut NEA and PBS, this may not seem like  a big deal but they get very little money and do great things.
124 comments
Read more

LLNL un-diversity

By scooby
Actual post from Dec. 15 from one of the streams. This is a real topic. As far as promoting women and minorities even if their qualifications are not as good as the white male scientists, I am all for it. We need diversity at the lab and if that is what it takes, so be it.  Quit your whining. Look around the lab, what do you see? White male geezers. How many African Americans do you see at the lab? Virtually none. LLNL is one of the MOST undiverse places you will see. Face it folks, LLNL is an institution of white male privilege and they don't want to give up their privileged positions. California, a state of majority Hispanics has the "crown jewel" LLNL nestled in the middle of it with very FEW Hispanics at all!
79 comments
Read more