A mechanical arcless dc circuit breaker is proposed and has been constructed. A rectifying device is used to block the reverse current of the breaker, allowing the breaker to open under zero current condition created by the discharge of a commutation circuit. A diode and a saturable reactor are used as the rectifying device, with a leakage current of ∼1 and ∼10 A, respectively. The duration of mechanical motion is about 20 ms, and its jitter is 2 ms, which is too long to make an economical system using a commutation capacitor. In order to avoid the dead time, the commutation circuit is started after the breaker kicks in and the final jitter is reduced to 20 &mgr;s. Arcless current interruption is achieved at 10 kA and 9.1 kV. Since a strong arc plasma is not generated between the contacts, a long lifetime of the breaker can be expected and a disconnecting switch can be used instead of a circuit breaker, reducing the size of the switch. These characteristics of the new breaker can be expanded for many applications.