The National Ignition Facility: Laser system, beam line design and construction

The construction of the National Ignition Facility (NIF) building and laser beampaths at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has been completed. This 8-year design/construction effort has successfully erected a 450,000 sq ft building and filled its interior with a complex of large-scale optical benches. These benches support all of the large-aperture optic elements of the NIF and the environmentally controlled enclosures that protect each of the 192 laser beamlines as they propagate from the injection laser system, through large aperture amplification stages, and into the target chamber. Even though this facility is very large, nearly 200 in long, 100 m wide, and 30 m tall, stringent mechanical performance requirements have been achieved throughout including temperature control <0.3 degreesC, laser-beam pointing stability on target <50 murms, and level 100 surface cleanliness on internal components. This presentation will provide an historical perspective explaining the basis of the design, technical details describing the techniques of construction and a chronological progression of the construction activities from ground breaking to beampath completion.