Fusion Engineering and Design 84 (2009) 1227–1232 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Fusion Engineering and Design journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/fusengdes Preliminary design of the control and data acquisition systems for the Neutral Beam Test Facility Adriano Luchetta ∗ , Oliviero Barana, Gabriele Manduchi, Cesare Taliercio Consorzio RFX, Associazione EURATOM-ENEA sulla fusione, corso Stati Uniti 4, 35127 Padova, Italy article info Article history: Available online 14 March 2009 Keywords: ITER neutral beam injector Negative ion source Control system Data acquisition system abstract The Neutral Beam Test Facility, which will be built in Padova, Italy, is aimed at developing the ITER heating neutral beam injector (HNB) and at testing and optimizing its operation up to nominal performance before installation on ITER. It requires the development of two independent experiments referred to as SPIDER (source for production of ions of deuterium extracted from Rf plasma) and MITICA (megavolt ITer injector & concept advancement). SPIDER will explore the full-size negative ion source for ITER, whereas MITICA will explore the full-size ITER neutral beam injector. Both experiments will be designed for long-pulse operation, up to 3600 s, as ITER itself. MITICA includes three functional components: the heating neutral beam injector plant system (HNB), which is the device under test; the auxiliary plant system (AUX), which includes all equipment to operate the HNB in the test facility (e.g. the local electric grid to feed the HNB power supplies), and MITICA supervisory system that is an electronics/informatics infrastructure to operate the facility. The paper introduces the requirements for the control and data acquisition systems of the experiments and proposes a preliminary design for both systems. SPIDER, which is preparatory to MITICA and will be developed on a shorter time scale, has no constraints coming from ITER CODAC, whereas MITICA includes the ITER neutral beam injector and therefore must be fully compatible with ITER CODAC. © 2009 Adriano Luchetta. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The requirements for the ITER heating neutral beam injectors (HNBs) [1] are summarized in Table 1. Neutral atoms of energy >80 keV/nucleon can only be produced efficiently by accelerating a beam of negative ions and subsequently converting it to a beam of energetic neutral atoms. International R&D is in progress on high- energy, high-power HNBs based on negative ions with the goal to achieve the required performance for ITER [2–4]. To demonstrate the feasibility of its HNBs, ITER has endorsed the construction of an ad hoc test facility to develop the full-size ITER HNB and testing it up to maximum performance. The facility, to be built in Padova, Italy, will include two different experiments referred to as SPI- DER (source for production of ions of deuterium extracted from Rf plasma) and MITICA (megavolt ITer injector & concept advance- ment). SPIDER will address the development of the full-size ITER ion source for both heating and diagnostic neutral beams, MITICA the development and test of the actual ITER HNB. The two exper- iments will operate independently and will have separate safety, interlock, and control systems and separate control rooms. To cut ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +39 049 829 5043; fax: +39 049 870 0718. E-mail address: adriano.luchetta@igi.cnr.it (A. Luchetta). costs, the experiments will share the same building and a few com- ponents. SPIDER is a preparatory experiment and its operation is scheduled for mid-2011, whereas MITICA operation is expected for 2014. 2. Control and data acquisition SPIDER is not required to be compatible with ITER and, thus, its control and data acquisition will not be subjected to the pre- scriptions defined by ITER [5]. This aspect and the earlier schedule of SPIDER suggest using a pragmatic approach to the design of its control and data acquisition system that will employ ready-off-the- shelf technologies, which have proven to be effective in process automation, real-time control, and data acquisition. Some of these technologies will not suitable for MITICA and ITER, because they are at the end of their life cycle and are expected to be replaced in the near future by new, emerging standards. This is the case of VME64 (ANSI/VITA 1-1994). Unfortunately there is no clear indica- tion today of what architecture will be common in the future in the field of high-performance, real-time control. Candidates comprise CompactPCI, Advanced and MicroTCA [6]. This paper will first describe the preliminary design of the con- trol and data acquisition system of SPIDER along with its system requirements. This is followed by the description of the addi- 0920-3796/$ – see front matter © 2009 Adriano Luchetta. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.fusengdes.2009.01.087