RF protection interlock system for lehipa

Abstract

Nuclear Power appears to be an inevitable option as future energy source; but disposal of nuclear waste is an important issue of concern in harnessing nuclear energy through “critical reactors”, which needs to be addressed satisfactorily. In India, economic exploitation of nuclear power is considerably dependent on Uranium &Thorium. Accelerator-Driven System (ADS) has the potential to provide an additional route to an efficient use of the available uranium and thorium resources, besides offering a way towards nuclear waste incineration. o The most challenging part of this CW proton accelerator is development of the low-energy injector, typically up to 20 MeV, because the space charge effects are maximal here. Therefore, BARC has initiated a programme for the development of a Low Energy (20 MeV) High Intensity Proton Accelerator (LEHIPA) as front-end injector of the 1 GeV accelerator for the ADS programme. RF Protection Interlock (RFPI) system has been developed for the protection of high power RF components in LEHIPA. The system consists of six VME64X based modules which processes output of different sensors. The system is designed based on a mezzanine card approach with a common base board. All the function specific boards are mounted as mezzanine boards. After detecting any fault, time required for RFPI system to switch off RF power to the cavities is less than 1us. The system consists of the following modules. 1. Multi trip module- processes the pickup RF signals from directional couplers. 2. Photo Multiplier Tube (PMT) module- processes output signals from PMTs 3. Field Emission Probe (FEP) module- processes output of field emission probes 4. Photo diode module- processes optical signal or arc signals from the system 5. Photo transistor module- processes output of photo transistor which is mounted on RF window 6. System control module-which processes RF leakage signals from wave guide joints and also generates RESET and Video Pulse signals to other modules of the system.