The missions of NIF are probably some of the most demanding in the entire world.
To be successful at that requires a fantastic workforce.
NIF wouldn't be here
without the people.
It's the people that we work with are what make it as wonderful as NIF is.
No one person can do this, right? Everyone of us is doing a very important job here.
Everyone's contribution is important.
Absolutely.
NIF was a grand idea when it was originally conceived and I think that
Livermore took on took on a hell of a challenge trying to get it implemented here.
I think the thing that a lot of us worried about was whether all 192 beams
would work at the same time.
There was alot of fear in there that this is just
way too big for us that we would never be able to handle it.
When you build
something as complicated as NIF and you realize how many moving parts there are
and how many things can fail it.
It can feel overwhelming and and I think many
of us on the engineering team sort of thought jeez it'll
be a miracle if we get it all working at the same time and get a shot where all the
beams go where they're supposed to go.
We're working literally at the speed of
light like to get all 192 beams at the center of the target chamber at exactly
the same time...
it has to be so perfectly timed, right?
We have these meetings where
you know you have 200 line items on Excel and none of them were simple and
there was a lot of pressure but a lot of camaraderie, a lot of excitement, you know
we had to prove to DOE that we could start operating as a radiological
facility and we were gonna get them all ready to go so they can do it safely and
efficiently and we did.
And this was a totally different laser where
you have to think totally different because otherwise it would have never
been possible to operate 200 laser beams with the reliability that we
can demonstrate every day now.
You were doing something that no one had ever
done before and and that's probably how people doubt it
because they couldn't conceive of how you would get things done.
The seven wonders of NIF were technologies that hadn't
even been developed when we started constructing NIF.
Every single one of those seven
wonders had to be invented after we promised we could build NIF so we didn't
know we could achieve those things.
So without these seven wonders of NIF we
would not be able to use the facility the way it is now.
Like, that is a really cool and
awesome way to do a project, right? A huge project!
Like I don't know how we're
gonna do it and somehow you do it, you get it done on time and it works.
One of
the things that motivates me greatly is what I would call working on the impossible.
NIF is a monument to that. It's a monument to a lot of people
coming together to do something that seemed impossible.
To see what the team
can produce and what we can accomplish is very inspirational.
So much at the forefront of HD science and physics that there are problems that
pop up that we didn't know existed before and then with this team we figure
out how to solve them.
The lab was founded on the principle of doing big science and in order to do big
science you need to have a great expert interdisciplinary team.
The quality of staff that we have here is amazing.
Anyone doing an experiment at NIF
is just phenomenal whether it's the data systems people, the user office
people, the engineering and diagnostics people, the expert groups that will look at
machine safety, the target fabrication organization and there's just an
enormous host of people who are here to help.
People have to forget that somebody in the world said it's impossible to do
this and they have to dream we can do this and they have to come together and
work together.
You have this sense of I am working in a place where we're doing
things that nobody else has done.
The missions of NIF are probably some of the most demanding in the entire world.
To be successful at that requires a fantastic workforce.
The NIF workforce is truly the 8th wonder of NIF.
No matter where you are in NIF, you're critical to the mission.
The fine details
that to the successes of those that help you meet each milestone comes from all
of your support people.
People are fantastic. To see it as the eighth wonder
of NIF? Absolutely.
The scary and cool thing is what comes next.
You thought the last 10 years were incredible?
Wait until you see the next 10 years.