ITER instrumentation and control system towards long pulse operation

ITER is a long-pulse tokamak with elongated plasma. The nominal inductive operation produces a D-T fusion power of 500MW for a burn length of 300-500 s, with the injection of 50MW of auxiliary power. With non-inductive current drive from the H&CD systems, the burn duration is envisaged to be extended to 3000 s. The term ITER Instrumentation& Control (I&C) includes everything required to operate the ITER facility. It comprises three vertical tiers; conventional control, interlock system and safety system, and two horizontal layers; central I&C systems and plant system I&C. CODAC (Control, Data Access and Communication) system forms the upper level of the hierarchy, and is the conventional central control system of ITER architecture. CODAC system is responsible for integrating all plant system I&C and enable operation of ITER as a single integrated plant. CODAC system provides overall plant systems coordination, supervision, plant status monitoring, alarm handling, data archiving, plant visualization (HMI) and remote experiment functions. CIS (Central Interlock System) and CSS (Central Safety System) also form the upper level of the hierarchy to supervising and integrating all plant system interlock and safety functions. Plant system I&C forms the lower level of the hierarchy, and provide dedicated plant data acquisition, plant status monitoring, plant control and plant protection functions to perform individual plant system operation under the supervision of central I&C systems. © 2012 The Japan Society of Plasma Science and Nuclear Fusion Research.