The National Ignition Facility (NIF) is an inertial confinement fusion facility that produces an intense flux of neutrons through the fusion of deuterium and tritium. By adding materials into the NIF capsule or to the surrounding hohlraum, neutron reactions can be measured to provide nuclear data for the nuclear forensics program. The NIF capsule produces a large number of 14-MeV neutrons, which can be used to measure activation reactions, and downscattered, lower-energy neutrons, which can be used to measure neutron capture reactions. Because of the short burn-time of the NIF shot, excited state nuclear reactions can also be measured, which cannot be done at traditional neutron sources. In addition, a variety of materials can be added to a NIF shot in order to produce isotopes of interest for the creation of realistic exercise debris samples. A program of nuclear forensics measurements at NIF has started with shots that use metal foils attached to the hohlraum as a target for neutron capture reactions. Future experiments and planned diagnostic improvements will be discussed. This work performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344. This work was funded by the Laboratory Directed Research and Development Program at LLNL under project tracking code 13-ERD- 036.

Applications for nuclear forensics at the National Ignition Facility

249th National Meeting (2015)

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