Officials of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have signed a Memorandum of Agreement establishing a Heavy-Ion Fusion Virtual National Laboratory (HIF-VNL), formally establishing their intent to collaborate "in the conduct of heavy-ion driver development in the common pursuit of Inertial Fusion Energy (IFE), and to promote more rapid progress in the development of heavy-ion drivers through technical management integration of the Laboratories scientific staff, equipment, and experimental facilities." Heavy-ion accelerators, often called "drivers," are used for delivering energy to small capsules containing fusion fuel in order to heat and compress them to the point that fusion energy is released. Heavy-ion are known to be inherently capable of high repetition rate and high efficiency, a necessary condition for civilian power plant applications of inertial fusion. Roger Bangerter, LBNL, has been named Director and B. Grant Logan, LLNL, has been named Deputy Director of the HIF-VNL. The HIF-VNL will oversee and integrate "all work by LBNL and LLNL on heavy-ion driver development." The agreement states that "This framework may be extended later to other participating laboratories" if they "petition to do so and by mutual agreement of LBNL and LLNL."

The agreement states that the Department of Energy, Office of Fusion Energy Sciences (OFES) "has the authority to organize periodic technical reviews of the HIF-VNL program as an appropriate part of the overall U.S. IFE and OFES programs," and states that "The appropriate balance between the HIF-VNL, IFE power plant technology, IFE target design, and laser IFE R&D within the US fusion program is to be determined by periodic DOE reviews."

The agreement states that "The HIF-VNL integrates management of HIF driver R&D, namely experiments and theory of beam injection, acceleration, pulse compression, final focus and chamber transport, and engineering design, leading to an Integrated Research Experiment (IRE) for testing critical issues in all these areas in an integrated fashion. The IRE may also be used for conducting high-density plasma interaction experiments using the IRE beam, and addressing some of the target issues specific to heavy-ion drivers. HIF target design, power plant chamber development, materials and target fabrication/injection R&D will be carried out in a separate non-driver technology program for both laser and ion approaches for IFE."

For further information, contact Roger Bangerter (bangerter@lbl.gov) or Grant Logan (logan1@llnl.gov).