Assembly, installation and commissioning of the new halo current sensors system for JET

This paper presents the status of the halo current sensors (HCS) diagnostic enhancement project for JET. The HCS system includes four sets of probes located in four octants equally spaced along the toroidal coordinate, with a total of 24 Rogowski coils and 5 toroidal field pick-up coils. These sensors are meant to provide a measurement of the current flowing through each single tile of the upper dump plate and an estimate of the total poloidal halo current flowing through the first wall structures. The HCS system was installed in the JET vacuum vessel in March 2005 during the 2004/2005 shutdown and the acquisition of signals started during the restart phase of the machine in autumn 2005. This paper firstly summarises the critical aspects encountered during the final phase of the procurement of the system and the in-vessel installation, which was accomplished using the remote handling system. The paper then focuses on the analysis and interpretation of the data collected during the functional commissioning of the new system, carried out during the restart phase of the machine preceding the experimental campaigns.