The need to travel to the NIF to carry out experimental plans has been reduced with proven, commercial technology that provide the ability to execute and monitor many of the tasks associated with shots. RIs are expected to provide a pre-shot brief(s) as required to the operations staff (typically at the change of shift, day shift to owl shift in the evening, or owl-to-day shift in the morning); this can be done in person or using LLNL’s preferred video conferencing tool, Cisco’s Webex client. The shot RI is expected to be available to control room staff to answer any questions about laser setup, target details, or diagnostic requirements; the shot RI will have provided a staffing plan for the shot with contact phone numbers for all members of the shot team. RI responsibilities during the performance of a shot include review of target diagnostic dry-runs, final target alignment review and approval, final diagnostic alignment approval including VISAR alignment to the target, and review of rod shot performance. The RI may verify alignments and parameters remotely by using Webex and sharing the view of the control-room operator’s console. The ability to execute shot operations remotely does not preclude the RI from being present for the complete shot cycle; on-site presence is highly desirable, if possible.
In the months preceding a shot, NIF RIs can enter campaign and experiment-specific details into NIF applications (e.g., SST as described in Section 8.1) via a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to the NIF IT environment (https://nifit.llnl.gov).
Responses to facility-issued calls for proposals are made via a cloud-hosted NIF User Portal (go to https://llnl.my.salesforce-sites.com) that does not require a VPN connection.
