The ground-fault detection system for DIII-D

This paper presents a discussion of the ground-fault detecting systems on the DIII-D tokamak. The subsystems that must be monitored for an inadvertent ground include the toroidal and poloidal coil systems, the vacuum vessel, and the coil support structures. In general, one point of each coil is tied to coil/power supply ground through a current limiting resistor. For ground protection the current through this resistor is monitored using a dynamically feedback balanced Hall probe transducer from LEM Industries. When large inductive currents flow in closed loops near the the tokamak, the result is undesirable magnetic error fields in the plasma region and noise generation on signal cables. Therefore, attention must be paid to avoid closed loops in the design of the coil and vessel support structure. For DIII-D a concept of dual insulating breaks and a single-point ground for all structure elements was used to satisfy this requirement. The integrity of the support structure is monitored by a system which continuously attempts to couple a variable frequency waveform onto these single-point grounds. The presence of an additional ground completes the circuit resulting in current flow. A Rogowski coil is then used to track the unwanted ground path in order to eliminate it. Details of the ground fault detection circuitry, and a description of its operation will be presented