Racing against concrete

2024-12-17 - China, responsible for the procurement of 220 blanket shield blocks for the ITER machine, oversees the shipment of a first batch of 48 in December. The truck is seen here leaving Donfang Electric Heavy Machinery Co., Ltd. in Guanzhou.

2024-12-16 - For some backfilling operations, no truck, pump or piping can easily access the zone. In these cases, solutions have been devised to bring the required concrete to where it is needed through a carefully orchestrated series of transfers of concrete to skips. In this image, one of the small skips delivered by cargo lift is emptied into a larger one that will be lifted and positioned above the opening to be filled.

2024-12-16 - The opening is now filled and the high-density concrete is being vibrated so that it settles in a homogeneous manner through the rebar. "Curing” will take one week; full compressive strength will be obtained in 28 days.

2024-12-13 - In December, the Director-General of ITER visits the EIPACA International School of Manosque, which provides K-12 bilingual education (French plus one of the following languages: English, German, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, or Japanese) and is attended by many children of ITER staff members. Pietro Barabaschi (second from left) meets with Nicolas Debenne (Director), Mickaël Cabbeke (Academic Director), and Annabelle Rinaudo (Deputy Head).

2024-12-13 - The 2024 ITER International School on magnetic fusion diagnostics and data science takes place at Nagoya Prime Central Tower, Japan, hosted by the National Institute for Fusion Science (NIFS). The school gathered a total of 199 participants from 21 different countries.

2024-12-11 - The ITER end-of-year celebration on 11 December 2024 is organized around the theme "A taste of Korea," with demonstrations of traditional dance (photo) and K-pop, as well as delicious Korean food. During the evening's ITER Team Awards ceremony, five teams were recognized for their strong track record of delivering in 2024.

2024-12-09 - Russian physicist Evgeny Velikhov, a major figure in the history of fusion research and, as Mikhail Gorbachev’s friend and scientific advisor, one of the driving forces behind the creation of ITER, passes away in December 2024 at age 89.

2024-12-04 - Components installed in the ITER Tokamak Complex will be exposed to magnetic fields to varying degrees. To test the resistance of these components before operation, and to avoid the risk of dysfunction, samples of valves, circuit breakers, and electric and electromechanical components are being subjected to maximum expected field levels in a test facility on the ITER site that was designed and built in China. See "How do electronics react to magnetic fields?" in the ITER video gallery.

2024-12-04 - Travellers to London's Victoria, Waterloo, King’s Cross St Pancras metro stations are crossing paths with ITER this month through a campaign by The B1M construction channel and Procore to advertise their latest documentary on ITER, which has recorded over two million views in three months. You can watch the documentary on The B1M YouTube channel.

2024-12-02 - In what is now an annual tradition, the municipality of Saint-Paul-lez-Durance, host to the ITER project, has presented the ITER Organization with a beautiful tree to decorate for the holiday season. It was jointly lit on 2 December by ITER Director-General Pietro Barabaschi and Mayor Romain Buchaut in a small ceremony attended by staff.

2024-12-02 - Pending the availability of the Control Building, cryoplant activities are managed from temporary control rooms staffed with ITER and Air Liquide staff.

2024-12-02 - The ongoing tests mimic the variations of the loads that the tokamak’s magnetic system will exert on the liquid helium flux. "This is quite unusual in the world of large cryogenic facilities, where loads are generally stable,” explains Marie Cursan, a project engineer in the Cryogenic System Project.

2024-12-02 - Twelve megawatt class-compressors, out of a total 18, are presently at work in the ITER cryoplant. Liquid helium at 4 K (minus 269 °C) is needed for the tokamak’s magnetic system and cryopumps, but also for the planned cold test facility, whose commissioning will begin in July next year.

2024-11-29 - A ceremony is held on 29 November at Dongfang Electric Heavy Machinery Co., Ltd. in Guanzhou, China, for the shipment of the first 48 blanket shield blocks. China is procuring 220 (out of 440) of these complex, actively cooled components, which will be attached to the inner surface of the vacuum vessel to protect the vessel and the toroidal field magnets from the neutron flux generated by the fusion reaction.