NIF system-design requirements for nuclear-weapons physics experiments

One of the objectives of the National Ignition Facility (NIF) is to provide an aboveground experimental capability for conducting weapons-physics experiments, for maintaining nuclear competence. To achieve the high-energy-density regimes needed for a science-based stockpile stewardship program, NIF must produce conditions similar to those in nuclear weapon explosions. This imposes fundamental facility design requirements on NIF. This document summarizes those requirements for opacity, radiation-flow, equation-of-state, non-LTE and x-ray laser, hydrodynamic, and capsule-implosion experiments