On September 28, the conventional facilities (500,000 square feet) part of the project was completed on time and on budget ($196 million). Even before the building was complete, NIF project managers were installing laser-related equipment. These included the target chamber, space frame, utility spine, spatial filter vessels and more. On September 26, for example, an integrated test was conducted, ahead of schedule, of the first amplifier slab "line-replaceable unit" (LRU). Inserting the LRU into the beamline forced the team to deal with a lot of issues: cleanliness, safety, off-normal conditions (e.g., "What do you do if the LRU gets stuck). Gina Bonano, associate project manager for NIF Assembly, Installation and Refurbishment, who recommended the test ahead of schedule, said the test "gives us confidence that if we plan, coordinate, and work together well, we can do more in that facility than we originally planned."

More than three-quarters of the NIF laser glass has been produced, in accordance all NIF specification.

LLNL Associate Director George Miller, who oversees the project, also noted "We have also installed the 1053 nm front end of NIF into the facility, completed the beampath for cluster 3 (1/4 of the facility) and done 10,000 shots without a failure on the pulsed power system (15 years of system lifetime). The facility is really coming together and we are pointing to first light to the target chamber in about 18 mo and real experimental data."

For further information, see the NIF web site: http://www.llnl.gov/nif/