  At the LHC, diffractive physics will be explored by the dedicated experiment
TOTEM whose Technical Design Report has been approved in Summer 2004. The
experimental programme will be carried out partly in TOTEM standalone mode for
purely forward phenomena like elastic scattering, and partly in collaboration
with CMS for processes requiring a full rapidity coverage. ATLAS and ALICE are
interested in diffraction for a later stage.
  This article presents the TOTEM/CMS running scenario for diffractive physics
in the first year of LHC. We discuss which processes are within reach and with
which statistics they can be measured.
