Development of the integrated control system for the microwave ion source of the PEFP 100-MeV proton accelerator

The Proton Engineering Frontier Project (PEFP) 20-MeV proton linear accelerator is currently operating at the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI). The ion source of the 100-MeV proton linac needs at least a 100-hour operation time. To meet the goal, we have developed a microwave ion source that uses no filament. For the ion source, a remote control system has been developed by using experimental physics and the industrial control system (EPICS) software framework. The control system consists of a versa module europa (VME) and EPICS-based embedded applications running on a VxWorks real-time operating system. The main purpose of the control system is to control and monitor the operational variables of the components remotely and to protect operators from radiation exposure and the components from critical problems during beam extraction. We successfully performed the operation test of the control system to confirm the degree of safety during the hardware performance.