Abstract

Comet is a general-purpose, heavy-duty, vertical-lift assembly designed for flexibility in conducting a variety of critical experiments. It is currently located at the National Criticality Experiments Research Center (NCERC) in Nevada. In the past, Comet resided at Technical Area-18 in Los Alamos, New Mexico, as part of the Los Alamos Critical Experiments Facility (LACEF). The Comet assembly was relocated to NCERC in 2008 and became fully operational in June of 2011. The first critical experiment performed on Comet at NCERC was a verification of one of the previous configurations of the Zeus experiment series. Over the next 10 years, many additional experiments followed including other Zeus configurations as well as completely new designs. This paper discusses the Comet vertical-lift assembly, the transition from LACEF to NCERC, and a selection of experiments that have been performed on Comet during its first 10 years of operation at NCERC.

摘要

Comet 是一种通用、重型、垂直提升组件，旨在灵活地进行各种关键实验。它目前位于内华达州的国家临界实验研究中心 (NCERC)。过去，彗星居住在新墨西哥州洛斯阿拉莫斯的 Technical Area-18，作为洛斯阿拉莫斯关键实验设施 (LACEF) 的一部分。Comet 组件于 2008 年搬迁到 NCERC，并于 2011 年 6 月全面投入使用。 NCERC 在 Comet 上进行的第一个关键实验是对 Zeus 实验系列之前配置之一的验证。在接下来的 10 年中，随后进行了许多额外的实验，包括其他 Zeus 配置以及全新的设计。本文讨论了彗星垂直升力组件，从 LACEF 到 NCERC 的过渡，