Of coils, large and small
12 Jun 2017
One of the 400 outer vessel coils, showing the long cable tail and parts of the external case.
In ITER, one finds all kinds of magnets: a central solenoid weighing approximately 1,000 tonnes; 18 vertical, D-shaped coils, each as heavy as a fully-loaded 747; 6 ring magnets up to 24 metres in diameter; a set of 18 planar and non-planar correction coils, some of them banana-shaped and ... 400 much smaller coils that are 11 millimetres thick, with external dimensions ranging from 150 to 300 millimetres, that will be fitted in the narrow space between the ITER vacuum vessel and its surrounding heat shields.
Designed to measure the magnetic field around the tokamak's core, these smallish outer vessel coils belong to the ITER diagnostics system. They will be manufactured by the Spanish company Elytt Energy, which just signed a EUR 2 million contract with the European Domestic Agency.
Delivery to ITER for installation on the ITER vacuum vessel is foreseen for mid-2018.
Read the full article on the website of the European Domestic Agency.