Verification Tests for Remote Participation at ITER REC

The ITER Remote Experimentation Centre (REC) in Rokkasho is a project implemented within the Broader Approach (BA) agreement at IFERC. The long-term objective of the REC is to allow researchers to take part in the experimentation on ITER from a remote location. On a shorter time scale, before ITER will be operated, the REC facility will be used to test technologies for remote participation in collaboration with existing European tokamaks and with JT-60SA, whose first operations are envisaged in 2020. Other than setting up and equipping the REC control room, during the first phase of REC (2013-2017) the project scope included activities aimed at developing and evaluating software tools for fast data transfer, remote participation, data analysis, and plasma simulation. These activities have been carried out by an Extended-Integrated Project Team (E-IPT). Indeed, due to the characteristics of the remote experiment, the collaborations with experts in other institutes providing experimental data, network infrastructure, data transfer protocol, and experiences on intercontinental data transfer and data acquisition were essential for the success of the REC activities. As a consequence, members from different Japanese and European institutions were invited to join in E-IPT; among the various contributors, there are members of the ITER project and of the Satellite Tokamak Programme (STP), members of the NII and the NIFS in Japan, and members of JET and WEST in Europe. In this paper, we report on the results of the REC verification tests that have been carried out in 2017. These tests were mainly aimed at assessing the functionalities of the REC control room (i.e., the configurability of the room layout, the capabilities of the video wall, etc.), as well as the functionalities of the software tools for remote participation that have been developed during the first BA period. A report on the preliminary remote participation tests carried out in collaboration with the JET tokamak will be also given, together with a description of the tests with both JET and WEST that have been planned for 2018.