With the National Ignition Facility transitioning to more of a user facility, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has named Jeff Atherton the director of the world’s biggest laser and shifted responsibility of the facility to the lab’s Science and Technology directorate. Former NIF Director Ed Moses will remain the principle associate director for the NIF and Photon Science Directorate, but Atherton—who had been the NIF deputy director—will report to Deputy Director for Science and Technology Bill Goldstein. “The role of the NIF director has grown, become more visible and needs to be continually interactive with the user communities; with respect to this alone it has become a full-time position,” Livermore Director Parney Albright said in a statement. “It is time to redefine the role of the NIF director to concentrate on implementation of the governance process, be responsible for developing and maintaining a facility use plan, and communicating with the HED science community and the broader set of stakeholders. The NIF director will ensure the facility use plan balances needs and priorities across the NIF mission areas.”
NIF failed to achieve ignition last year as planned, and the NNAS has directed the laboratory to rebalance shots on the massive laser in favor of shots designed to improve knowledge for the Stockpile Stewardship Program while opening up the facility to outside users as well. “NIF has entered a new era, operating as the world’s pre-eminent high energy density (HED) science facility supporting an international community working in national security and frontier science,” Albright said. “NIF has demonstrated key capabilities in all mission areas that could not be done anyplace else. The demand for NIF capabilities is growing, and the sophistication of the experiments is increasing along with the number of shots requested.”