Developing a response to handle compensation of lost beamtime is high on the priority list at ALS. More detailed information will be posted here. More details of the Berkeley Lab response to COVID-19 can be found on the Lab’s web site.

Currently, as of 7/6/2020, a limited number of people are allowed on site at ALS while the Bay Area is under a shelter-in-place order and begins a slow reopening. During Return to Work Pilot 2, the ALS will have a limit of 38 badge-ins per day with a careful eye on physical distancing for all work.

In addition, the ALS is entering a new period called Pilot 2 on July 6. To our best knowledge, this would allow beamlines with non-essential experiments and non-robotic mode to run some non-hazardous user experiments in a much limited way, mostly to establish proper procedure to run these experiments.

The ALS is not moving to a full mail-in service for other than robotic experiments before the shut-down, but there is a possibility for us to run some easy experiments remotely during the last two weeks before the previously scheduled late summer shutdown. These experiments are designed as pilots to establish a plan for a more comprehensive return to user service after the shutdown in cycle-2-2020. Other than that, an emphasis will be laid on commissioning and development activities. Beamline scientists will contact local users with appropriate experiments. The current mode will continue through August 10.

Here are some instructions detailing this period:

• No on-site users until further notice from LBNL management, mail-in samples only.
• Non-hazardous user experiments, no radioactive samples.
• Gas loading is permitted, but it needs to be coordinated with beamline staff beforehand.
• The cancelled experiments in the period of March 16-June 30 will be triaged into experiments that could be possible run remotely in July and early August, before the shutdown, which has been scheduled for August 10 - September 10.
• Running remotely means that one of the staff members will be at the beamline doing the experiment with a remote user connection if required (over ZOOM, via VNC or over phone/email).
• Social distancing and face covering are required for BL scientists on-site.
• Martin Kunz (mkunz@lbl.gov) or Bora Kalkan (bkalkan@lbl.gov) will (or have already) contact some local users with appropriate experiments for test experiments. Please refer to this link for further information about shipping and follow instructions from beamline staff https://als.lbl.gov/shipping-and-receiving/.

The ALS plans to use cycle-2-2020 to compensate for beamtime lost in the first cycle due to the shelter-in-place. The proposals submitted for cycle-2-2020 are automatically transferred to cycle-1-2021. No new proposals will be accepted for cycle-1-2021 at the originally planned deadline in September. For more details on ALS operation in cycle-2-2020 and cycle-1-2021, please attend the ALS-User Town Hall meeting (https://als.lbl.gov/user-town-hall-to-address-access-and-beamtime/).

Bora Kalkan, COMPRES beamline scientist