The upgrade of EAST Safety and Interlock system

Abstract: The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), a nation-level large-scale scientific project of China, plays a key role for the research of peaceful utilizations of fusion energy. The safety and interlock system (SIS) is in charge of the supervision and control of all the EAST components involved in the protection of human and tokamak from potential accidents. With the development of physical experiment, the SIS had come close to reaching its limits for expandability. Therefore, a prototype for upgrading EAST SIS has been designed, and a fast architecture based on COTS FPGA is absorbed into the new SIS. This paper presents EAST machine and human protection mechanism and the architecture of the upgrading safety and interlock system.