Science Talk

Scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory have successfully employed a new diagnostic tool to gauge the effect of nuclear weapons in a lab environment: the Dual-Axis Hydrodynamic Test.

According to an NNSA statement issued today, here is how it works:

Conducted inside a specially designed double-walled containment vessel, the test used high explosives to drive an implosion of a W78 duplicate made from non-nuclear surrogate materials. As the mockup is imploding, the DARHT facility fires two electron accelerators positioned at a 90-degree angle from one another to generate high-power X-rays that are used to create multiple images of the imploding device’s inner workings, which are then compared with computer predictions.

“Initial indications show excellent data return,” David Funk, LANL's hydrodynamic experiments division leader, is quoted as saying in the statement. “The baseline experiment captured five time-dependent X-ray images and a variety of data from other diagnostics of pressure, temperature, and timing."

Any questions?