Department of Energy FY 2012 Congressional ... - The FIRE Place

(dollars in thousands)
FY 2010
Actual
Approp
FY 2011
Request
FY 2012
Request
The budget request enables the completion of work to address essential facility maintenance
requirements necessary to meet critical milestones described in the Predictive Capability
Framework (PCF). The PCF is the path for providing certification capabilities in the future and
provides a framework for integrating science, technology and engineering efforts DP-wide.
The FY 2012 budget request also supports subcritical experiments required for improving
predictive capability of performance calculations for nuclear weapon primaries. A JASON study
will be initiated to evaluate future scaled and surrogate experiments. This component of
Advanced Certification principally supports the design and execution of subcritical experiments
that require the participation of much of the nuclear security enterprise to execute successfully.
This includes designers and engineers at the National laboratories, manufacturing and fabrication
at the laboratories and other sites, transportation and handling, and experimenters and
diagnosticians at the NNSS. This will also support the required experiments necessary to calibrate
advanced diagnostics and ensure soundness of experiment design. Major experiments using Pu
will be conducted at the NNSS. Hydrodynamic experiments using surrogate materials will be
conducted at the Dual-axis Radiographic Hydrodynamic Test facility at Los Alamos National
Laboratory (LANL) and the Contained Firing Facility at Lawrence Livermore Laboratories'
(LLNL) Site 300. The development of transformational diagnostic capabilities that support these
experiments will occur at LANL, LLNL, Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), and NNSS.
Primary Assessment Technologies 82,838 85,723 86,055
Primary Assessment Technologies provides capabilities needed for strengthening assessment for
stockpile primaries, for enabling a broad range of options for future LEPs, and for underwriting
improvements in weapons safety and security. These capabilities also provide the foundation for
national security missions concerned with assessment of foreign or improvised weapons.
In 2012, the following major activities will be conducted within the scope of Primary Assessment
Technologies: the evaluation of aging effects on the predicted certifiable service lifetime of pits;
experiments to provide materials data and improved understanding of implosion hydrodynamics at
laboratory firing sites and pRad at LANSCE; nuclear data measurements with the prototype
Time Projection Chamber at LANSCE. These experiments are aimed at improving our
understanding of criticality, safety, and performance through precision determination of the fission
cross section for plutonium. Basic advances in our treatment for high explosives and improved
metrics for assessing calculations of primary implosions will be delivered in support of a 2012
Level 1 Milestone. Lastly, a principal focus will remain on the planning and coordination
provided by the National Boost Initiative. This is a tri-lab effort to develop a predictive capability
for the boosting process in stockpile primaries.
Primary Assessment Technologies also contributes to funding the Stewardship Science Academic
Alliances (SSAA). The SSAA program provides financial assistance to approximately
40 academic institutions in two areas of unique relevance to weapon science: low energy nuclear
science and materials under extreme conditions.
Weapons Activities/
Science Campaign Page 88
FY 2012 Congressional Budget