Remote experiment with WEST from ITER Remote Experimentation Centre

Abstract Remote experiment with WEST tokamak in CEA Cadarache from ITER Remote Experimentation Centre (REC) in Rokkasho had been successfully carried out under the agreement between the Government of Japan and the European Atomic Energy Community for the joint implementation of the Broader Approach (BA) activities in the field of fusion energy research. The WEST and the REC sites were connected with the international broadband network for science and education of SINET, GEANT and RENATER. Due to a long distance over 10,000 km of two sites, the latency was about 200 ms (round trip time) in total via the direct line between EU and Japan of SINET5. Based on the communication between local and remote participants, plasma discharges were successfully executed repeatedly according to the pulse schedule produced by remote Session Leader after the approval by Engineer in Charge on WEST site. Intershot analyses were successfully executed during the pulse interval on an analysis server prepared in Partners network in the WEST for external collaborator. Full function required for the remote experiments were successfully demonstrated in the large size tokamak facility, WEST. For remote participation of ITER, however, it is expected that the amount of experimental data and the number of remote participations will become very large. Distributed database system based on data replication using high-speed data transferring method and distributed computing resources in local and remote sites are proposed as a possible solution in ITER.