Carlo Damiani

Status of ITER neutral beam cell remote handling system

Abstract The ITER neutral beam cell will contain up to three heating neutral beams and one diagnostic neutral beam, and four upper ports. Though manual maintenance work is envisaged within the cell, when containment is breached, or the radiological protection is removed the maintenance must be conducted remotely. This maintenance constitutes the removal and replacement of line replaceable units, and their transport to and from a cask docked to the cell. A design of the remote handling system has been prepared to concept level which this paper describes including the development of a beam line transporter, beam source remote handling equipment, upper port remote handling equipment and equipment for the maintenance of the neutral shield. This equipment has been developed complete the planned maintenance tasks for the components of the neutral beam cell and to have inherent flexibility to enable as yet unforeseen tasks and recovery operations to be performed.

A MGy, Low-Offset Programmable Instrumentation Amplifier IC for Nuclear Applications

This paper shows a customized MGy radiation tolerant instrumentation amplifier. The 65 nm CMOS-based ASIC amplifier has an offset smaller than 1 μV and a noise level below 50 nV/√Hz from DC. It consumes less than 5 mW and has a common-mode-rejection-ratio larger the 100 dB. In addition, it allows a programmable gain setting from 8,16,32,64,128 to 256. The performance of this instrumentation amplifier was monitored during an on-line radiation experiment up to a total ionizing dose larger than 1 MGy, enabling the read-out of the most common nuclear temperature and position sensors.

Applying remote handling attributes to the ITER neutral beam cell monorail crane

Abstract The maintenance requirements for the equipment in the ITER neutral beam cell require components to be lifted and transported within the cell by remote means. To meet this requirement, the provision of an overhead crane with remote handling capabilities has been initiated. The layout of the cell has driven the design to consist of a monorail crane that travels on a branched monorail track attached to the cell ceiling. This paper describes the principle design constraints and how the remote handling attributes were applied to the concept design of the monorail crane, concentrating on areas where novel design solutions have been required and on the remote recovery requirements and solutions.

Status of the design refinement and the characterisation of the in Vessel Viewing system for ITER

The paper describes the key concepts of the In Vessel Viewing System probe in phase of design refinement in ENEA Frascati laboratories and presents an integrated survey both on the design activities and the numerous test activities that have been performed to characterize the system and to verify the compliance of its key elements with the ITER environmental conditions.

MGy Radiation Assessment of a Space-Graded Amplifier and ADC

This paper shows a high total dose radiation assessment on a set of space qualified components. Two space graded COTS (Commercial off-the-shelf) components were selected and monitored under 60Co gamma radiation, namely an instrumentation amplifier and a 14 bit analogue-to-digital-converter (ADC). The specifications of these COTS components were monitored on-line with a customized test bed, up-to a total ionizing dose larger than 1 MGy and are presented in this paper.

A 1 MGy TID Radiation-Tolerant 56 µW CMOS Temperature Sensor with ±1.7°C Accuracy

The total-ionizing-dose (TID) radiation tolerance of CMOS temperature sensors is generally limited by the radiation-introduced leakage current in diodes. A dynamic base leakage compensation technique is employed to improve the radiation hardness of the CMOS temperature sensor. The fabricated temperature sensor achieves an accuracy of ±1.7°C from -40°C to 125°C, while the power and area consumption are only 56 μW and 0.07 mm2, respectively. The temperature sensor is assessed with a gamma irradiation experiment with a dose rate of 1 kGy/h, and radiation induced temperature readout drifts are smaller than 0.2% after 1 MGy.

Conceptual design of a versatile radiation tolerant integrated signal conditioning circuit for resistive sensors

This paper presents the design of a radiation tolerant configurable discrete time CMOS signal conditioning circuit for use with resistive sensors like strain gauge pressure sensors. The circuit is intended to be used for remote handling in harsh environments in the International Thermonuclear Experimental fusion Reactor (ITER). The design features a 5 V differential preamplifier using a Correlated Double Sampling (CDS) architecture at a sample rate of 20 kHz and a 24 V discrete time post amplifier. The gain is digitally controllable between 27 and 400 in the preamplifier and between 1 and 8 in the post amplifier. The nominal input referred noise voltage is only 8.5 μV while consuming only 1 mW. The circuit has a simulated radiation tolerance of more than 1 MGy.