Recent Progress on Boron-Carbide Ablators for the National Ignition Facility

This presentation will outline a high-yield boron carbide ablator implosion design as well as recent advancements in target fabrication at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Boron carbide shares many beneficial characteristics of modern ablators (moderate density, amorphous, low-melting pressure) and has the potential to be highly uniform (that is, no internal defects). We present a high-yield integrated design and analyze its sensitivity to a variety of common perturbations. Progress on fabricating free-standing spherical shells (at scale) will also be shown.