Control and monitoring of the Tore Supra toroidal superconducting coils

Light nuclei controlled fusion reactions are seen as a possible way to produce nuclear energy. For this reason, the interest in hot plasma researches in tokamaks has increased. The Tore Supra main characteristic is related to the superconducting magnet coils. They allow a suitable energy balance, however, they require an accurate and preventive fault detection. The Tore Supra machine and the different methods to detect a transition (from superconducting to normal mode) in the toroidal coils are described. The voltage of the coils, the pressure of the helium superfluid at 1.8 K and the electric current in the circuit parallel resistances, are measured. A computer aided control system allows the toroidal field monitoring (current in the coils, fault detection). The superconducting magnet configuration chosen for Tore Supra seems to be suitable for future large Tokamak devices