Significant surprises in NIF results might be an objective signal of inadequacies in the SBSS program and would spur efforts to improve basic understanding of weapons physics. Predicting ICF results in well-diagnosed experiments and ultimately achieving ignition are in many respects more technically demanding than making a nuclear weapon work. Other ICF facilities have similar outreach programs more than 100 graduate For example, a new program makes about 10% of the NOVA shots available, at no charge, to university experts in laser-matter interactions and high-energy-density physics, on the basis of brief proposals focused on basic science. Beyond the long-standing LLE effort at the University of Rochester, universities have been involved in the ICF program at a modest but increasing rate since recent declassification of much of the program. Universities are the primary source of scientific and technical talent, and the NIEF will provide new opportunities for university-National Laboratory synergism, both in personnel and in science.
The attraction of the NIF is so high that, indeed, it may be a management and leadership challenge to keep the ICF program in proper balance with the rest of SBSS. While it is difficult to quantify how much more successful the NIF would be in attracting personnel than other proposed SBSS facilities, a majority of the committee members are involved in the training of scientists, and their consensus is that they would more strongly encourage their students to work on the NIF than on any other proposed SBSS facility. This assertion is supported by the ICF program's history of attracting and retaining high-quality personnel.
In the collective judgment of the committee, the NIF should stimulate the scientific imagination and attract excellent scientists and engineers more than any other proposed element of SBSS.
In the committee's judgment, ICF provides a unique synthesis of these relevant physics areas, and the NIF would provide unique capabilities for basic experiments in atomic physics, radiation flows, plasma physics, and hydrodynamics. Maintaining core intellectual and technical competencies requires a challenging theoretical, computational, and experimental program in the areas of implosion hydrodynamics, instabilities and mix, radiation transport, and theormonuclear burn. The stewardship community must be able to respond to unforeseen challenges, including technical issues in support of treaty negotiations, as well as the recognized issues of safety, security, reliability, aging, remanufacturing, and proliferation monitoring and control. The committee believes that a stewardship program based only on the static knowledge and technology of the past would find it difficult to attract and maintain the necessary scientific talent. These conditions are important to ensuring an imaginative and high-quality SBSS program. The maintenance and renewal of technical skills and overall scientific competence can be best fostered through ambitious technical challenges and the opportunity for scientific recognition, both through publication in the open literature and through performance in the classified community. Appropriate personnel are best attracted and retained by the opportunity to participate in challenging basic research. In particular, the National Laboratories must be able to attract, train, and retain competent and creative scientists with the skills necessary to understand nuclear weapons and to certify the stockpile. Previous reviews 1 have recognized that a successful SBSS program requires the ability to sustain and enhance the scientific competence of the National Laboratories. One of the stated goals of the SBSS program is to maintain core intellectual and technical competencies in nuclear weapons in the absence of nuclear testing.
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