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l External reviewers knew that the project couldnt be built for $1.2 billion, but declined to say so in public. According to Grunder, who served on a National Academy of Sciences panel that reviewed the NIF proposal in 1997, the panel believed that the project would cost $1.7 billion to complete, but didnt put the figure in its published report.
l In an effort to control costs, the NIFs 192 lasers are packed tightly together. Previous laser designs, such as Livermores Nova facility, have been spread out on the ground, allowing technicians easy access during assembly. Clean assembly of NIFs lasers
will therefore be very difficult, although independent assessors say it can be done. We did it so that the NIF could go in a realistically sized building, says Tarter. We didnt appreciate the fact that if you packed the lasers closely together, lab technicians couldnt go in and work on them during assembly.
l Research efforts, such as the Beamlet laser and a laser amplifier called Amplab, which were to have run in parallel with NIF construction and to answer questions critical to its success, were discarded early because of budgetary constraints. Tarter says Beamlet a full-sized prototype of a NIF laser should have been kept running as a test bed for NIF technologies, instead of being shut down once it was established that it worked.
l Other research efforts required to complete the project successfully, including investigation of the target hohlraums for the facility and several issues related to the durability of its optical components,...