Development of a slow controller based prototype for data acquisition and control system for fusion research and development

Nuclear fusion is the upcoming trend to develop high power and meet the energy requirements in the world. International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) is a megaproject to develop a reactor producing high amount of power through nuclear fusion. For the fusion experiments, a neutral beam having a duty cycle of 3S ON/ 20S OFF and is modulated at 5Hz, having current of 18–20 A at 100 KeV of energy. Data Acquisition and Control System is required to acquire the samples for duration of 3600sec during the research process. Hence research and development works are being carried out for the development of slow controller [1] based prototype that can handle almost 400 signals for further evaluation and usage in Indian Fusion programs The slow control system is based on PLC. The control system software will be based on CODAC [2, 3, 4] software which is platform developed by ITER as a standard Instrumentation and Control framework. It has archiving facility that allows storing data for further use. The slow control system has to be set up where both components Control and data acquisition will communicate with each other.