Target area and diagnostic interface issues on the National Ignition Facility (invited)

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) is under construction at Lawrence Live rmore National Laboratory for the DOE Stockpile Stewardship Program. It wil l be used for experiments for inertial confinement fusion ignition, high en ergy density science, and basic science. Many interface issues confront the experimentalist who wishes to design, fabricate, and install diagnostics, and to help this process, a set of standards and guideline documents is bei ng prepared. Compliance with these will be part of a formal diagnostic desi gn review process. In this article we provide a short description of each, with reference to more complete documentation. The complete documentation w ill also be available through the NIF Diagnostics web page. Target area int erface issues are grouped into three categories. First are the layout and u tility interface issues which include the safety analysis report, target ar ea facility layout; target chamber port locations; diagnostic interferences and envelopes; utilities and cable tray distribution; and timing and fiduc ial systems. Second are the environment interface issues which include radi ation electromagnetic interference/electromagnetic pulse effects and mitiga tion; electrical grounding, shielding, and isolation; and cleanliness and v acuum guidelines. Third are the operational interface issues which include manipulator based target diagnostics, diagnostic alignment, shot life cycle and setup, diagnostic controllers; integrated computer control system; sho t data archival; classified operations; and remote operations. (C) 2001 Ame rican Institute of Physics.