OVERVIEW OF THE PRELIMINARY SAFETY ANALYSIS OF THE NATIONAL IGNITION FACILITY

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) is a proposed U.S. Department of Energy inertial confinement laser fusion facility. The candidate sites for locating the NIF are: Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sandia Nati onal Laboratory, New Mexico, the Nevada Test Site, and Lawrence Liverm ore National Laboratory (LLNL), the preferred site. The NIF will opera te by focusing 192 individual laser beams onto a tiny deuterium-tritiu m target located at the center of a spherical target chamber. The NIF has been classified as a low hazard, radiological facility on the basi s of a preliminary hazards analysis and according to the DOE methodolo gy for facility classification. This requires that a safety analysis r eport be prepared under DOE Order 5481.1B, Safety Analysis and Review System.((1)), A Preliminary Safety Analysis Report (PSAR) has been app roved, which documents and evaluates the safety issues associated with the construction, operation, and decommissioning of the NIF.((2))