The near infrared imaging system for the real-time protection of the JET ITER-like wall

This paper describes the design, implementation and operation of the near infrared (NIR) imaging diagnostic system of the JET ITER-like wall (JET-ILW) plasma experiment and its integration into the existing JET protection architecture. The imaging system comprises four wide-angle views, four tangential divertor views, and two top views of the divertor covering 66% of the first wall and up to 43% of the divertor. The operation temperature ranges which must be observed by the NIR protection cameras are, for the materials used on JET: Be 700 °C-1400 °C; W coating 700 °C-1370 °C; W bulk 700 °C-1400 °C. The Real-Time Protection system operates routinely since 2011 and successfully demonstrated its capability to avoid the overheating of the main chamber beryllium wall as well as of the divertor W and W-coated carbon fibre composite (CFC) tiles. During this period, less than 0.5% of the terminated discharges were aborted by a malfunction of the system. About 2%-3% of the discharges were terminated due to the detection of actual hot spots.