A Modern Framework to Support Disruption Studies: The Eurofusion Disruption Database

Disruptions can lead to potential damage to the fusion reactors and represent one of the major obstacles for the successful exploitation of the tokamak concept in commercial fusion power plants. The European Fusion Roadmap has identified disruptions as a high-priority research area. In the present experiments, a significant effort is devoted to address key physics and engineering issues connected to disruptions. The huge amount of data produced during the experiments in the various facilities is one of the most valuable resources for improving the understanding of these events and designing effective prevention strategies. The prevention is a key requirement to achieve reliable steady-state operation in high performance regimes, and, ultimately, to demonstrate the scientific feasibility of fusion power plants based on the tokamak concept. The present work describes a novel framework, DEFUSE (Disruption and Event analysis framework for FUSion Experiments), supporting the development of the EUROfusion Disruption Database (EuDDB). DEFUSE includes a fully automated workflow to build and validate a standardized multi-machine database, integrating version control and various tools to ensure the reproducibility of the analysis (including data consistency and provenance tracking). A data abstraction layer provides the compatibility with the ITER Integrated Modelling & Analysis Suite (IMAS) and ensures a seamless integration with potentially any device, including ITER.