Optoelectronic developments for remote-handled maintenance tasks in ITER

Remotely handled maintenance tools operated in the future International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) will face a harsh radiation environment, with total dose level requirements of several MGy. Optical fiber data communication has been considered as an alternative to conventional electronic transmission between the control room and remote handled maintenance equipment, mainly owing to its insentivity to electro-magnetic interference and to its wavelength encoded multiplexing capabilities. In this paper we summarise main results obtained at SCK•CEN over the past years towards the development of radiation tolerant fibre-optic communication links and report on the radiation tolerance of various individual optical components such as optical fibres, laser diodes and photodetectors, as well as their associated electronic driver circuits.