TCV - Tokamak à Configuration Variable

CRPP, EPFL


DESCRIPTION


TCV is the main experimental facility on the Lausanne site of CRPP. TCV stands for "Tokamak à Configuration Variable" and tells thus the main properties of this machine. 

The tokamak concept is presently the most advanced concept for a thermonuclear fusion reactor. A fusion power plant will convert the energy released on nuclear fusion reactions of light atomic species (e.g. hydrogen) into electricity. It is a promising and almost unlimited energy source for the coming centuries when other energy resources (oil, coal and uranium) will be exhausted.
In a tokamak a hot plasma is confined in a toroidal configuration by magnetic fields - partly produced by external coils and partly produced by an internal toroidal plasma current. It allows for to produce high enough temperatures in the plasma so that sufficient fusion reaction can take place under controllable conditions. 

In this system S-LINK will be used for the thermographic monitoring of the temperature of tokamak inner wall carbon tiles. The infrared radiation of the tiles is measured by a microbolometer infrared camera. The parallel digital data output of the camera will be connected to the data acquisition system of the TCV tokamak using ODIN type S-LINKs. The camera with 356x240 pixels sends 12-bit data at a frame rate of 50 Hz, which corresponds to a 12-bit word rate of  4.272 MWord/sec (6.408 MByte/sec).

The camera readout system is designed by the Hungarian company CAT-SCIENCE.


STATUS

Hardware

8 March 2000 Two ODIN links ordered
2 April 2000 Testing of readout will be done in July 2000
12 October 2000 Full system delivered and working. Experiment will start taking data in February 2001
26 March 2002 System working. A similar second system will be installed

DOCUMENTATION


CONTACTS


CERN - High Speed Interconnect - S-LINK
Erik van der Bij - 28 March 2002