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Playing the “bad guy” to enhance next-generation safety
Sometimes, cops and robbers is more than just a kid’s game. At the Department of Energy’s national laboratories, researchers are channeling their inner saboteurs to discover vulnerabilities in next-generation nuclear reactors, making sure that they’re as safe as possible before they’re even constructed.
R. D. Deranian et al.
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 47 | Number 3 | April 2005 | Pages 768-773
Technical Paper | Fusion Energy - Plasma Engineering, Heating, Current Drive, and Control | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A779
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An extensive set of software tools for integrated plasma control, developed and validated on the DIII-D tokamak, has been applied to several nextgeneration fusion device designs including KSTAR, EAST, and ITER. These devices will require elements of integrated plasma control in order to achieve high reliability advanced tokamak or burning plasma operation. Plasma Control Systems (PCS) based on the DIII-D PCS have been designed for each of these devices. The integrated plasma control approach uses validated physics models to design controllers for plasma shape and both axisymmetric and nonaxisymmetric MHD instabilities and confirms control performance by operating actual machine control hardware and software against detailed tokamak system simulations. The physics-based models include conductors, diagnostics, power supplies, and both linear and nonlinear plasma models. These models can be implemented in the detailed control simulations to verify event handling and demonstrate functioning of control action under realistic hardware (CPU and network) conditions. Results of simulations are shown, illustrating control performance characteristics produced by each device design, engineering choices, and control system algorithms and hardware. Such simulations allow confirmation of performance prior to actual implementation on an operating device.