US delivers multiple "firsts" for ITER site

As the ITER facility rises in southern France, the US Domestic Agency for ITER is ramping up its procurement deliveries.

 

In January, the United-States delivered its first batch of production superconductor for the toroidal field magnet system to the European winding facility in La Spezia, Italy. The same month, it delivered the first highly exceptional load to travel the ITER Itinerary —a massive high voltage transformer for the steady state electrical system. And in March, the first components of the tokamak cooling water system, two large drain tanks, were shipped from Camden, New Jersey, for forecasted delivery to the ITER site in April.

 

US deliveries are timed to meet the ITER construction schedule. The drain tanks, for example, are among the first large-scale components delivered to the ITER site because they need to be installed in the basement level of the Tokamak Building during construction. The electrical component deliveries are needed so the ITER site can receive power from the 400kV grid as the installation and commissioning activities intensify and the electrical demand increases beyond the capacity of the temporary power source now in use. US ITER is using the US-based vendor TransProject, LLC, to handle shipping, as part of a project-wide logistics services agreement.

 

The January toroidal field conductor delivery to the European winding facility in La Spezia is the first US shipment of production conductor—conductor which will actually be installed in the ITER machine. (Earlier US deliveries were for sample conductors, used to verify the manufacturing and winding process for the toroidal field coils.) The US is providing 8 percent of ITER's toroidal field conductor—a total of over 6.4 km of conductor—and will complete its conductor deliveries by 2016.

 

The ITER drain tank procurement consists of four 61,000 gallon tanks, plus one smaller 27,000 gallon tank. Manufactured by Joseph Oat Corporation in Camden, N.J., under contract to Areva Federal Services in Charlotte, North Carolina, the tanks—part of the tokamak cooling water system—are the first ITER components to be manufactured in the US to comply with French nuclear safety pressure regulations.The United States is responsible for the design and procurement of the entire tokamak cooling water system, which is the primary cooling system for the ITER machine and has the capacity to remove 1 GW of power from client systems in the form of heat.

 

The high voltage transformer delivered in January is part the 75 percent US contribution to ITER's steady state electrical network. In the months to come, the US will deliver three other identical transformers to the site, plus 6.6 kV and 22 kV switchgear components.

 

See the full article on the US ITER website.