The Megajoule laser program - ignition at hand

The French Atomic Energy Commission (Cea) is currently building the Laser MegaJoule (LMJ), a 240-beam laser facility, at the Cea Laboratory CESTA near Bordeaux. LMJ will be a cornerstone of Cea's Simulation Program, the French Stockpile Stewardship Program. LMJ is designed to deliver about 2 MJ of 0.35 m light to targets for high energy density physics experiments, among which fusion experiments. LMJ technological choices were validated through the Integration Laser Line (LIL), a scale 1 prototype of one LMJ laser bundle, built at Cea/CESTA. Plasma experiments started at the end of 2004 on LIL, which is already open to the scientific community through the Plasma and Lasers Institute. The construction of the LMJ building itself started in March 2003. 4 laser bays and the target bay hall are under construction and the fabrication of the target chamber is near completion. This target chamber has a diameter of 10 m and a wall thickness of 10 cm of aluminium, it will have 260 holes, 80 of them can be used as laser windows, giving a maximum flexibility for experimental arrangement of the 60 quadruplets. LMJ will be gradually commissioned from early 2011, and after an experimental program to progress toward fusion, the first fusion experiments will begin late 2012