Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's Atomic Vapor Laser Isotope Separation Program: Laser technology and demonstration facilities

The Atomic Vapor Laser Isotope Separation (AVLIS) Program at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is developing a large-scale process for photophysically enriching isotopes of several elements. The Program is now deploying plant prototypical hardware to demonstrate this enrichment process at full scale. The Laser Demonstration Facility, a fully integrated laser system has been constructed and when complete, will produce more than 5000 W of tunable average power at a pulse repetition frequency greater than 10 kHz. In AVLIS, an atomic vapor of mixed isotopes is irradiated with laser light precisely tuned to photoionize only desired isotopes. The resulting electrically charged photoions are deflected in an electric field to collector (or extractor) plates where they condense as enriched products. The AVLIS Laser System consists of a series of high average power dye lasers optically pumped by an array of copper lasers. The dye lasers are used to do the three-step photoionization process. These lasers are well suited for the AVLIS process for both technical and economic reasons. They provide the precise narrow band (greater than 100 MHz), short pulse (greater than 100 ns), high-average power, high-repetition frequency laser light required by the atomic spectroscopy and vapor flow properties. Equally important, the capital and operating costs of this laser system in its present state of development, are consistent with a commercially viable process development