Early Operation 1996-2006
The key attributes of Sandia’s Z machine are its 18 million amperes which discharge in less than 100 nanoseconds. The array of tungsten wires is called a liner In 1999, Sandia tests the idea of nested wire arrays the second array, out of phase with the fist, compensating the Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities of the first. In 2001, Sandia introduces the Z-Beamlet laser (from surplus equipment of the National Ignition Facility).as a tool to better image the compressing pellet. This confirms the good shaping uniformity of pellets compressed by the Z machine. Sandia announced the fusing of small amounts of deuterium in the Z machine on April 7, 2003.
Besides being used as an X-ray generator, the Z machine propelled small plates at 34 kilometres a second, faster than the 30 kilometres per second that Earth travels in its orbit around the Sun, and three times Earth's escape velocity. It also successfully created a special, hyperdense "hot ice" known as ice VII, by quickly compressing water to pressures of 70,000 to 120,000 atmospheres (7 to 12 GPa).
A good overview of the different missions of the Z machine can be found in the 2002 Trivelpiece committee report which reviewed the pulsed power activites at Sandia.
During this period the power of X-ray produced jumps from 10 to 300TW. In order to target the next milestone of fusion breakeven, another upgrade is then necessary... but not before melting diamond.
Read more about this topic: Z Machine
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or operation:
“Yet, haply, in some lull of life,
Some Truce of God which breaks its strife,
The worldling’s eyes shall gather dew,
Dreaming in throngful city ways
Of winter joys his boyhood knew;
And dear and early friends—the few”
—John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892)
“Waiting for the race to become official, he began to feel as if he had as much effect on the final outcome of the operation as a single piece of a jumbo jigsaw puzzle has to its predetermined final design. Only the addition of the missing fragments of the puzzle would reveal if the picture was as he guessed it would be.”
—Stanley Kubrick (b. 1928)