Moving ahead with procurement

The CODAC, Heating & Diagnostics (CHD) Department is happy to announce that it has now entered into the procurement phase of providing components for the ITER machine. On 19 April, the Director-General of the ITER Organization signed the Diagnostic Neutral Beam Power Supply Procurement Arrangement in Paris with the Indian Domestic Agency. This is the first Procurement Arrangement for our Department; preparations for several others to be signed in the coming months are progressing well. Last week, we successfully concluded the design review for Diagnostic Neutral Beam Beamline Procurement Arrangement. This week, we will be conducting the design review for the Ion Cyclotron Sources and Power Supply Procurement Arrangement. These preparations have set the momentum for the procurement phase of our activity.

We have also made substantial progress in the standardization of instrumentation and control (I&C) components. Technical selection has been made for programmable logic controller (PLC) equipment, and commercial contracts with industry are being finalized. PLCs are real-time computers used for controlling the automation of electromagnetic processes. We have also prequalified vendors for the cubicles that will be used for instrumentation and control in the ITER Organization which has permitted us to launch the tender. Our IT team has been very active in delivering the computational cluster to the Fusion Science & Technology Department. The cluster has 216 CPUs, 4 Gbyte per CPU and runs on the same operation and cluster software as the Barcelona Supercomputer Centre. First calculations are running already. A collaborative network with India has been established with a target of 20 Mbps effective file transfer.

Many of the system requirements documents for different Work Breakdown Structures in the Heating & Current Drive Division have been approved or are in the final stages of recommendation before approval.

We are currently hosting many of our colleagues from different Domestic Agencies in the Diagnostics Division in a bid to produce pilot Procurement Arrangement documents by end of the month so that we are then able to produce the final Procurement Arrangements with each Domestic Agency during the next year. In April, we had a very successful International Tokamak Physics Activity (ITPA) Diagnostics meeting in St. Petersburg which was attended by more than 70 people. Good progress on all high-priority topics was made but further progress will be necessary for diagnostics first mirrors.