Picture an elaborate stage, a video screen and newly laid artificial grass dotted by 800 chairs, mostly filled with Livermore Lab employees and officials from various federal agencies, like the Strategic Air Command. As backdrop, visualize a huge, 130 ton spherical target chamber designed to contain thermonuclear, or fusion, explosions suspended behind the stage. The sphere spans 30 feet across. Its aluminum-alloy walls are 4 inches thick, constructed of 18 welded plates. The sphere is pockmarked by 118 holes of various sizes intended to accommodate 192 focused laser beams and a plethora of sophisticated diagnostic instruments. Eerily, as the giant object's dedication ritual begins, Lab laser chief Mike Campbell compares it to the Death Star from Star Wars. On this day, June 11, 1999, the National Ignition Facility (NIF) target chamber is pure theater.

Soon, however, it will be lowered into a hole 3 stories deep. The sphere is the reactor vessel, the "business end" of NIF. Pellets stuffed with radioactive tritium and deuterium will be placed in its bowels, one at a time, to be detonated by an intense x-radiation field generated by NIF's multiple lasers.

The football stadium-sized NIF machine will stand about 8 stories tall at its peak. The installation of the target chamber now marks the half-way point in NIF construction. It will be completed in 2003, says the Lab. NIF will be used to advance nuclear weapons design knowledge and to train a "new generation" of nuclear weaponeers, according to Lab and Dept. of Energy documents.

Furthermore, these enterprising young weapons scientists will not all work for the U.S. government; some will be employed by the nuclear establishment of Great Britain and some by France.

Generally speaking, when one nation shares information and technology that could allow another nation to upgrade its nuclear arsenal, that is called nuclear proliferation. Yet, during the NIF target chamber dedication, staged to boost Lab employee morale and garner "gee whiz" science publicity, the sharing of nuclear weapons secrets-to-come "shows the importance of international cooperation," according to U.S. Energy Secretary, Bill Richardson.

Graham Jordan, acting Chief Scientific Advisor to the United Kingdom's Ministry of Defence and Jacques Bouchard, Director of Military Applications for the French Atomic Energy Commission stood on the ceremonial center stage with Richardson and Livermore Lab Director Bruce Tarter.

Jordan called NIF an "international resource." The U.K. will invest several million dollars in NIF, and will share directly in its nuclear experiments, he confirmed. British money will make it possible to increase the number of "shots" using the current target chamber, he said. Moreover, his country will look into the feasibility of also building a second target chamber, in order to increase NIF's "flexibility." A second target chamber has long been the desire of U.S. weapons designers. NIF's rising price tag, now standing at $1.2 billion for construction alone, had made Lab and DOE management leery of asking Congress for this expensive "add on." Apparently, they found an alternate funding source.

Bouchard said France has anted up 200 million Eurodollars to share in NIF. This Fall, the Parliament will take up the question of funding the French Laser Megajoule, a near replica of NIF to be built in the Bordeaux region. The French megalaser effort is dependent on the U.S. sharing key technologies, including, say news reports, a computer prohibited as too "sensitive" for export by the U.S. Commerce Dept.

This tri-national nuclear cooperation "is going to be the key to preventing proliferation in the future," Secretary Richardson, told the crowd.

Indeed.

Marylia Kelley
Tri-Valley CAREs
(Communities Against a Radioactive Environment)
2582 Old First Street
Livermore, CA USA 94550