Abstract

The road to achieving scientific break-even in nuclear fusion has been long, but early in the morning on December 5, 2022 at the National Ignition Facility, target gain of 1.5 was realized.  This talk covers some of the history of the ignition program since the first full power experiments on NIF almost a decade and half ago with more detail leading up to the ignition shot.  Some of the most relevant scientific considerations that come into play when designing and optimizing an indirect drive inertial confinement fusion (ICF) target are mentioned.  This is followed by a discussion of the multiphysics radiation hydrodynamics code HYDRA, a workhorse in designing the ignition targets.

This work was performed under the auspices of the U. S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under contract DE-AC52-07NA27344.  Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC

Biography

For the past 16 years, Scott Sepke has worked at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory as a computational physicist working on the 2D/3D multiphysics radiation hydrodynamics code HYDRA, supporting modeling of inertial confinement fusion and other targets for the National Ignition Facility (NIF).  His focus areas include thermonuclear burn; neutron, light ion, and gamma ray Monte Carlo transport; radiochemistry; laser ray tracing and laser plasma interactions; and generating simulated NIF diagnostics.  Prior to coming to Livermore, he completed a postdoc in Physics and Astronomy at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and received a BSE, MSE, and Ph. D. in nuclear engineering from the University of Michigan.