NIF & Yosemite

On Thursday we had to gather at 7:00 before the hostel because we were heading to the National Ignition Facility (NIF) located 50 miles to the east of San Francisco.

We arrived at a gate where we encountered armed guards for the first time on our trip. This is due to the fact that the NIF is part of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory which is a federal funded research and development center. The NIF is a nuclear fusion facility that tries to achieve deuterium-tritium fusion by means of a high energy laser. It should be noted that solving the energy problem is not the only purpose of this facility. NIF is also part of the U. S stockpile stewardship program that does reliability testing and maintenance of nuclear weapons.

Fortunately the guards did not open fire but instead gave us some friendly directions to the check in point, where we would obtain our visitor passes. We arrived a bit too early so we were told to wait in the lobby, where we were shown a video that gave a short introduction about the world’s largest and highest-energy laser (it’s really great). Our tour guides were a financial manager and an electrical engineer, who both retired from the NIF. A small but noticeable shock emerged in one of the tour guides’ faces when we mentioned that we were physicists. We were split in two groups and the tour was on its way.

I cannot speak for the other group but let’s just say that the retired financial manager was not completely up to speed with (laser-) physics. It became obvious fairly early in the tour that he had rehearsed a story about all the stuff we were going to see, along with some statistics about the laser. About halfway through the tour he started apologizing for not being able to answer all the questions. This was a bit disappointing but the we were shown pretty much all of the different parts of the laser system, which was pretty neat. Unfortunatey we were not allowed to take pictures, so here is a shot of the Star Trek: Into Darkness movies, which was shot at the NIF.

Now we had the afternoon off which we took as an opportunity to visit one of America’s most treasured national parks: Yosemite Park. Since the park is massive we only drove through Yosemite Valley and got out a few times to go for small walks. The weather was beautiful and the panorama of the valley with El Capitan from the Tunnel View point was astounding.

Again we split up in two groups: one group was going to attempt to find a camping spot in the park, while the others would head back to the hostel after sunset. I was not prepared for a camping trip so decided to go home. I was not really prepared to go camping so decided to go with the group that would explore the valley. We got out after a 10 minute drive from the entrance, enjoying some refreshing mountain air on the green meadows near a tiny lake.

Our next stop was near the bottom of one of the massive cascades in the park. Since this entire area was in the shade of the mountain, we noticed a quick temperature drop as the sun was setting. It got even cooler when we got to the bottom of the cascade poured into the remnants of an ancient glacier. The water vapor arising from the water crashing on the rocks was freezing cold and meant taking photos and selfies was out of the question. This made the entire trip there useless because now it did not happen and we could not get internet points for being there.

But then to our avail we met this fellow:

An American black bear, chilling just 50 meters from the road. A nice ending to a beautiful trip through Yosemite National Park.
Roeland