Optical Processing Facility
This is the Optical Processing Facility. It's a Class 100 clean room. That means no more than 100 particles of dust or other contaminants larger than half a micron can be present in each cubic foot of air. The optics are cleaned, spin-coated with anti-reflective materials, and thoroughly inspected for defects before they can be released for installation in the lasers. All of the optics for the National Ignition Facility are processed here. In the final quality inspection, backlighting is reflected on the surface of each optic to detect possible coating defects, and high-intensity lights are used to find optical defects. Every lens, window, crystal and mirror must pass the stringent quality tests before they can be installed in the National Ignition Facility. (See Optics.)