Nuclear science

This report examines the performance of the six participants in DOE's Inertial Confinement Fusion Program. GAO specifically looked into DOE's allegation that the performance of one of the six participants did not meet program expectations. This participant supports the inertial fusion research experiments of the other participants, mainly by providing fusion target components. This report found that performance was mixed. In addition, most of the six participants did not accomplish all of their planned objectives or assigned tasks for various reasons. However, this report believes that comparisons of performance among the six would not be valid because of the different functional role each performs in the program, different degree of difficulty of objectives, and different stages of development of participant programs