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:
“Mormon colonization south of this point in early times was characterized as going over the Rim, and in colloquial usage the same phrase came to connote violent death.”
—State of Utah, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed; and that which in contemplation is as the cause is in operation as the rule.”
—Francis Bacon (15601626)