Images of the Week

ITER Director-General visits India

29 Oct 2024

ITER Director-General Pietro Barabaschi made stops in Mumbai and Hazira this month during a trip to India to visit with a key industrial partner.

The ITER Director-General is at Larsen & Toubro headquarters in Mumbai with, on the right, S. N. Subrahmanyan, Chairman and Managing Director, and on the left, Anil Parab, Director and Senior Executive Vice President. In the background is Anna Encheva, ITER's In-Vessel Assembly Project Leader.

After stakeholder meetings in China and Russia earlier this fall, the ITER Director-General was in India in October. He visited the headquarters and one of the principal manufacturing sites of Larsen & Toubro, the industrial conglomerate that was responsible for the production of the 3,800-tonne ITER cryostat.

In Mumbai, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed between the ITER Organization and Larsen & Toubro for technical collaboration, specifically in the area of advanced welding technology for ITER machine assembly (vacuum vessel ports, bellows...). "In previous contributions to ITER, Larsen & Toubro has demonstrated its reliability in high-tech manufacturing," stressed ITER Director-General Barabaschi "This [Memorandum of Understanding] is vital to meeting the technology challenges of the ITER Project."

At the Larsen & Toubro manufacturing facility in Hazira, Director-General Barabaschi is speaking with a worker while Anil Parab, Director and Senior Executive Vice President (left) and Anil Bhardwaj, Project Manager for the ITER Cryostat and Group Leader/Mechanical Engineering (right) look on.

On his return to ITER, a digital contract was signed with Larsen & Toubro representatives for a contract titled "Port Positioning Alignment & Welding." Ports provide access inside the vacuum vessel for auxiliary plasma heating, diagnostics, vacuum pumping, and other needs at three levels (upper, equatorial, and lower).