Preliminary approval for vacuum vessel

Last week, the inter-departmental team in charge of designing the ITER vacuum vessel had reason to celebrate. "This is a big step towards the vacuum vessel construction," stated Division Head Kimihiro Ioki when he received the letter from the Agreed Notified Body (ANB), a private company authorized by the French Nuclear Regulator to assess conformity of nuclear pressure equipment and to provide the preliminary approval of the vacuum vessel design.

The report represented the ANB's conclusions regarding the vacuum vessel baseline design, pressure testing, and all materials including the materials for the in-wall shielding of the vacuum vessel. "We still have a lot to do to get approval for the Modified Reference Design decided in July this year," says Gary Johnson, ITER Deputy Director-General for the Tokamak. "But this is a very big step along the way. This 'Preliminary Design Approval at the End of Phase 1' represents a critical milestone for the project and clearly shows that we are on the right track!"