Management of unconverted light for the National Ignition Facility target chamber

The NIF target chamber beam dumps must survive high x-ray, laser, ion, and shrapnel exposures without excessive generation of vapors or particulate that will contaminate the final optics debris shields, thereby making the debris shields susceptible to subsequent laser damage. The beam dumps also must be compatible with attaining and maintaining the required target chamber vacuum and must not activate significantly under high neutron fluxes. Finally, they must be developed, fabricated, and maintained for a reasonable cost. The primary challenge for the beam dump is to survive up to 20 J/cm2 of lpm light and 1 - 2 J/cm2 of nominally 200 - 350 eV blackbody temperature x rays. Additional threats include target shrapnel, and other contamination issues. Designs which have been evaluated include louvered hot-pressed boron carbide (B4C) or stainless steel (SS) panels, in some cases covered with transparent Teflon film, and various combinations of inexpensive low thermal expansion glasses backed by inexpensive absorbing glass. Louvered designs can recondense a significant amount of ablated material that would otherwise escape into the target chamber. Transparent Teflon was evaluated as an alternative way to capture ablated material. The thin Teflon sheet would need to be replaced after each shot since it exhibits both laser damage and considerable x- ray ablation with each shot. Uncontaminated B4C, SS, and low thermal expansion glasses have reasonably small x-ray and laser ablation rates, although the glasses begin to fail catastrophically after 100 high fluence shots. Commercially available absorbing glasses require a pre-shield of either Teflon or low thermal expansion glass to prevent serious degradation by the x-ray fluence. Advantages of the hot-pressed B4C and SS over glass are their performance against microshrapnel, their relative indifference to contamination, and their ability to be refurbished by aggressive cleaning using CO2 pellets, glass beads, high pressure water or ultrasonic tanks. In addition the expected replacement rate to avoid catastrophic failure makes the glass option more costly. SS is less expensive, more easily formed into a louver design with high capture efficiency, and otherwise equivalent to B4C. Hence, it would be preferred as long as debris shield damage is not substantially greater for SS as compared to damage from an equivalent mass of contamination of B4C. If debris shield damage is problematic, the escape of SS could be mitigated by use of a transparent Teflon film. The Teflon film would require increased target chamber pumping and cleaning capability to accommodate the x-ray decomposition products