Hot Cell facility work plan — Step one

On 27 June, the ITER Hot Cell was the focus of a meeting in Cadarache with the remote participation of the European ITER Domestic Agency " Fusion for Energy" and Agence ITER France. The objective of the meeting was to share the International feedback on stainless steel liners and resins liners in nuclear facilities, to assess the requirements to be met by the ITER Hot Cell Facility, to assess the feasibility of implementation of liners (stainless steel or resin) and to present a first estimation of options including cost.

The ITER Hot Cell Facility is a very unique combination of tritium irradiated materials and dust, with components of enormous sizes to be refurbished or discharged. Today it is current practice for hot cells to implement stainless steel liners in order to increase the leak tightness, and thus to improve safety during operations, and to reduce the amount of waste during the dismantling phase. An alternative discussed could be epoxy resin liner.

This meeting was a first action within the new Hot Cell Facility work plan developed after the last meeting of the Science and Technology Advisory Committee (STAC). Its results will contribute also to the value engineering due to begin in September.

"Both, meeting and discussion, were fruitful," Magali Benchikhoune, Section Leader of the ITER Hot Cell, summarized. "The components' weight and equipment as well as their technical feasibility seem adequate for the anchorages and penetration. Regarding confinement issues, a concept developed at La Hague (see related article in this issue) seems promising."