NASHUA, NH—Former NASA astronaut Dr. Jeff Wisoff will give the keynote address at the 2010 Lasers and Photonics Marketplace Seminar in San Francisco, CA (www.marketplaceseminar.com). Wisoff will discuss the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Early this year, NIF passed the criteria set in 1997 for commissioning—installation of all 192 beams, with 96 of them together generating 500 kJ in the ultraviolet. Now that NIF is operational it’s being prepared to begin ignition experiments with the goal of demonstrating laser-driven inertial confinement fusion ignition and fusion energy gain in the laboratory for the first time. In his talk, Wisoff, who is NIF’s deputy principal associate director, will describe how NIF works and its important missions in national security, energy security, and basic science.
The laser and optics industry has played a significant role in the construction of NIF. “Now that NIF is ready to ramp up the power it should be interesting for our industry to hear from an insider about how the facility will be used,” said Tom Hausken, analyst at Strategies Unlimited (Mountain View, CA) and one of the conference organizers.
According to Ed Moses, principal associate director of Livermore for NIF, the facility should reach its full 1.8 MJ output in about a year and fire 250 shots in fiscal 2010, reaching 700 shots a year in 2012. By then Moses hopes to have demonstrated ignition as well.
Hosted by Laser Focus World, Strategies Unlimited, and Industrial Laser Solutions, the Lasers and Photonics Marketplace Seminar will be held January 25, 2010 in San Francisco in conjunction with Photonics West. The annual seminar provides the only applications-oriented review of global laser markets coupled with business and technology trends focused on the optoelectronics and photonics markets. For more information, go to www.marketplaceseminar.com.