ON THE WAY OUT THE DOOR, UNDER SEC. KOONIN RAISES NIF CONCERNS

As he left the Department of Energy, former Under Secretary of Science Steve Koonin sounded a note of alarm about Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s effort to achieve fusion ignition at the National Ignition Facility by the end of Fiscal Year 2012, suggesting in a Nov. 8 memo obtained by NW&M Monitor that success on the endeavor is “not assured” and that work should begin for a ‘Plan B’ should the ignition campaign fail. Submitted the day he resigned, Koonin’s memo recognizes the challenges of achieving fusion ignition at a laboratory, and chronicles his fourth one-day review on the project. “The NIC [National Ignition Campaign] presents a mixed picture as it enters it second and final year,” Koonin wrote, noting that 35 experimental shots over a five-month period had been largely successful, but had revealed some of the challenges of achieving ignition. Specifically, Koonin said important aspects of the performance of the targets that are compressed by the facility’s 192 lasers are not understood. “Some of these challenges are being addressed successfully, while others are so far proving more recalcitrant,” he wrote. “There are also large gaps in our ability to simulate experimental results and to do extrapolative predictions.”