Maxwell Energy Products, Inc. announced today that it has received a firm order for 1200 Main Energy Storage Capacitors to be delivered to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for the National Ignition Facility (NIF). The order represents the largest dollar value order for capacitor production that the company has ever received. Under the terms of the contract, LLNL has an option to acquire an additional 1200 units.

Each of the capacitors is rated at 299 uF 24 kV and stores over 83.5 kilojoules of energy when charged to their rated voltage. A kilojoule is approximately the same energy as that in a 22-caliber rifle bullet. To safely store this amount of energy, the capacitors are designed to be self-healing, using very thin, vapor-deposited metallizations for their electrodes. The technology used by Maxwell in the NIF capacitor design was originally developed by the company for the Strategic Defense Initiative, and has been applied commercially to medical defibrillator energy storage capacitors.

The National Ignition Facility is a major Department of Energy program for inertial confinement fusion (ICF). Multiple laser beams will simultaneously impact on a target fuel pellet from all sides, rapidly heating it to the temperatures and pressures that are required to achieve fusion. For a brief moment, the fuel will reach the same conditions found at the center of the sun. The Maxwell capacitors are part of the series of laser amplifiers in each beam that convert the electrical energy stored in the capacitors to laser energy.

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