Pumping up the volume
8 Dec 2008
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Sabina Griffith
The picture shows members of the ITER Organization and ITER US vacuum teams together with the Oerlikon Leybold Vacuum research team looking at past (antique) roughing pumps in the Leybold Museum of Vacuum.
The first roughing pump workshop with participation from the ITER Organization and the US Domestic Agency was held last week. A three-day meeting held partly at Cadarache and partly in Cologne, aimed at starting the development program for the ITER roughing pumps.
Roughing pumps are used to transport gas from the ITER machine to the tritium plant and recycle gas in the ITER pellet injectors. Due to the high gas throughputs on ITER and the very large vacuum systems, the roughing pumps will be extremely challenging to design. The workshop brought together the experts in the ITER Organization, US teams, and industrial companies to identify the key technological issues to be solved.