The People of NIF

Rod Saunders: Each Day is an Adventure

At an hour of the day when Livermore Laboratory parking lots are emptying and most employees are contemplating dinner, Rod Saunders is full of energy and ready to start work. As a National Ignition Facility (NIF) shot director, Saunders works a 13-hour night shift, three to four days a week, at the world's largest and most energetic laser.

National Ignition Facility shot director Rod Saunders orchestrates laser shots from the NIF control room.

Night work is nothing new for Saunders, a 31-year Laboratory employee. He regularly worked nighttime shifts at several of NIF's predecessor lasers. Even as a teenager, he worked nights in a gas station. The only difficulty for Saunders is switching from a night shift for work to a daytime shift for his long weekends to spend time with his family—an adjustment he is more than willing to make each week.

When Saunders arrived at the Laboratory with both Navy training in electronics and an associate of arts degree in electronics, he looked forward to a career in the same field. "I thought my job would be all electronics." Instead, Saunders was quickly recruited to join Livermore's laser effort to build increasingly powerful lasers composed of thousands of optical components. "I knew nothing about lasers," he recalls, but that soon changed.

Saunders has worked on several generations of Livermore lasers, including Argus, Shiva, Novette, Nova, and now NIF. On Shiva, he learned to align laser beams and minuscule targets. For Novette and the 10-beam Nova laser, he built many electro-optical sensors, which are used to characterize the laser beam. Saunders eventually joined the Nova shot operations staff and became shot director, a position he held for 14 years.

At NIF, Saunders completed the first output sensor, worked on beam control, and then was promoted to lead operator a short time later. Saunders was named NIF shot director four years ago. He compares his work to that of an orchestra conductor, ensuring that the numerous preparatory activities leading up to each NIF shot occur in harmony. "Conducting shots on NIF is a real team effort," he says.

Saunders usually can be found in the NIF control room, which is modeled after the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's mission control room in Houston, Texas. There, he is in radio contact with technicians in the control room and at stations throughout the facility. NIF control room operators access and interact with data through a hierarchy of computer menus. The data shown correspond to thousands of control points for electronic, optical, and mechanical devices. Operators can also view videos of key hardware from cameras located throughout the complex.

The combination of overseeing thousands of laser shots and building optical sensors has given Saunders an intimate knowledge of many NIF subsystems and the possible pitfalls of designing and executing a laser shot. That knowledge becomes invaluable when a hardware or software issue arises during the shot preparation. Even though NIF uses the world's most sophisticated computer control system, a system that can diagnose and address many roadblocks in the shot preparation and execution sequences of activities, humans must sometimes intervene and troubleshoot.

In his spare time, Saunders enjoys working on cars. He notes that the patience and troubleshooting techniques he has learned from auto repair apply to his work as shot director. In both cases, Saunders says, "You have to think on your feet." Saunders' other hobby, shooting and editing film, has also carried over into his work, sometimes in surprising ways. Saunders has created laser safety videos and occasionally films portions of NIF for educational purposes. Saunders has also stepped in front of the camera. The original Tron movie filmed scenes at the Shiva laser, and Saunders landed a small acting part, in full cleanroom garb, for the film.

Saunders' decades of experience with the Laboratory's laser program has allowed him to build lasting relationships with many long-time technical and scientific staff members. He observes that some of the junior scientists he worked with at Nova are now senior scientists performing experiments at NIF. "Developing a good rapport with the scientists is to my advantage," he says, allowing him to better understand the needs and expectations of his customers—the experimentalists. He strives to help deliver the right product for his customers by producing the best possible shots, on schedule and with good experimental data.

In the end, what keeps Saunders enthusiastic about his work, he says, are the people and the variety: "Every day is different, and there is always a challenge. I look forward to each day's adventure."