Long implosion experiments and simulations on the Saturn and Z machines

Summary form only given. By increasing the implosion time for Z-pinches from the canonical 100 ns to 200-300 ns, the complexity and power flow risks can be reduced for future higher current generators, assuming that the implosions still produce high energies and powers. The recent success of high wire number arrays and nested configurations have permitted load designs to be considered that could provide the necessary performance at the longer implosion times, i.e. can we challenge the conventional wisdom? At Sandia National Laboratory, two experimental campaigns (on Saturn and Z) plus two-dimensional MHD modeling have been performed to investigate the scaling of tungsten wire arrays to 150 to 250 ns implosion times.