Dept of Energy 1301 Clay Street Oakland, Ca 94612-5208

11 -- NUCLEAR TARGETS Contact David A. Pines, Contracting Officer 510/637-1875. It is the intent of DOE, Oakland, to issue a sole source contract to General Atomics (GA) for the manufacturing of Nuclear Targets for National Laboratories. The contractor will devlop and deliver specified target components, associated support systems, target component measurements and characterization methodologies and the performance of other ICF target related technology development tasks in support of the five laboratories conducting ICF experimental programs. GA offers a truly unique combinaton of qualifications, including unique E.S. industry technical capabilities, unique target fabrication equipment, and unique laboratory facilities. GA personnel have demonstrated their exceptional technical capability in a wide variety of fields relevant to the ICF program: advanced materials; nuclear engineering; multi-layer spherical shell and thin film production and characterization; radioactive materials handling; cryogenics; pulsed power; plasma physics; fusion science; and engineerng. GA produces multi-layer polymer shells that serve as the heart of ICF targets. These shells are produced in the size range of 200 to 1000 um, with wall thicknesses from 3 to 100 um, meeting sphericity and concentricity specifications of a few % with surface smoothness of a few hundred Angstroms. GA is expert with a number of coating techniques to coat shells and other substrates with polymer and metallic films. GA holds numerous patents and proprietary processes that have contributed to their success. GA fabricates metal hohlraums that serve as the outside piece of an indirect drive target in the size range of a few tenths of a mm to 1 cm in diameter and length. Dimensional tolerances of a few microns and surface finishes of a few 100 A are achieved. GA assembles capsules, hohlraums and other components into completed targets which often involves handling classified material and working in restricted access areas. GA routinely carries out classified work for DOE and DOD. GA has a fully functioning and approved security capability to properly protect sensitive and classified information and materials. GA has 54 Q-cleared personnel working on ICF target support contract activities. It is necessary that the contractor have high level security clearances. Further GA has a "broad" license form the State of California (designated an "agreement state" by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission) which allows GA to do much of their own radioactive material handling approvals. GA can handle up to 100 grams of tritium and has a Tritium Lab. The laboratory has all tritium monitors, air handling equipment and access control necessary to allow use of up to 2 grams of tritium. Most, but not all the equipment used by GA is DOE-owned. If a new contractor was selected, the Government owned equipment would have to be shut down, disassembled, moved, installed and re-activated at an estimated cost to the government of over a million dollars and require six months at which time the program would cease causing unacceptable delays in fulfilling agency program requirements. Significant private facilities are being used at GA. Many of these facilities are specialized (stringent environmental, temperature and access controlled) and significant cost to the Government would be incurred because the initial cost of these private facilities was born by GA. The estimated cost of dedicated facilities is in excess of four million dollars. To bring another contractor to the same level of facilitization, and capability could require several years. During such a hiatus in target support contractor services and/or expertise, the ICF laboratories would incur increased costs to backfill because of this lack of support in order to meet their on-going experimental program requirements and schedules. Therefore, transferring the effort to a new, competitively selected contractor would entail significant duplication of (non-recoverable) costs to the Government and substantial delays in meeting agency program requirements. (018)

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