Status of the Z Refurbishment Project (ZR) at Sandia National Laboratories

Sandia National Laboratories' Z Refurbishment (ZR) Project formally began in August 2002 to increase the Z Accelerator's utilization by providing the capability to perform more shots, improve precision and pulse shape variability, increase delivered current, and accomplish the improvements with minimal disruption to Z's ongoing programs. A project overview was provided at the 14th International Pulsed Power Conference in 2003 [1], This paper provides an update of the project including architectural changes over the past two years, timeframe for completion, and overall design and fabrication status.

I. INTRODUCTION

The Z Accelerator at Sandia National Laboratories began service as Particle Beam Fusion Accelerator II (PBFA II) in 1985, designed as a high voltage ion beam driver (10–30 MV in a single-gap diode) for inertial confinement fusion (ICF) research. The vacuum power flow and output transmission line sections were modified in 1996 to a high current drive configuration (18–20 MA into a wire array load). The Z Refurbishment Project will design and replace essentially all pulse power systems (Figure 1) in order to achieve the following objectives: •

increase utilization by providing the capacity to perform more shots

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improve overall precision and pulse shape variability for better reproducibility and data quality

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increase delivered current allowing for additional performance capability

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accomplish improvements with minimal disruption to Z 's ongoing experimental programs.