Your email address will only be used for the purpose of sending you the ITER Organization publication(s) that you have requested. ITER Organization will not transfer your email address or other personal data to any other party or use it for commercial purposes.
If you change your mind, you can easily unsubscribe by clicking the unsubscribe option at the bottom of an email you've received from ITER Organization.
As the massive ring-shaped coil inched its way from the Poloidal Field Coils Winding Facility, where it was manufactured, to the storage facility nearby where i [...]
Like a plume of white smoke rising from a cardinals' conclave to announce the election of a new pope, the tenuous vapour coming from one of the ITER cooling cel [...]
The global players in the energy sector convened in Rotterdam last week for the 26th edition of the World Energy Congress (WEC). The venue was well chosen, wit [...]
The EU Blueprint for Fusion Energy workshop, convened by the European Commission's Directorate-General for Energy, brought together key stakeholders in the fiel [...]
Neutral beam injection | ELISE achieves target values for ITER
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Garching, Germany, have generated the ion current densities required for ITER neutral beam injecti [...]
Cryostat Workshop | Lower cylinder and base take shape
The lower cylinder of the ITER cryostat represents only one-third of the whole component's height. Still—it dwarfs the men standing nearby.
Nothing gives a better sense of the size of the ITER machine than the ongoing works in the Cryostat Workshop, where the the lower cylinder and base section of the cryostat are being assembled and welded under the responsibility of Indian contractor Larsen & Toubro.
Both tiers of the cryostat lower cylinder are now in place, stacked one on top of the other. The lower tier is already fully welded, while the segments of the upper tier are being readied for welding operations.
At the other end of the football-field-size Cryostat Workshop, the base of the cryostat is progressively taking shape.
The base section—1,250 tonnes—is the single heaviest piece of the ITER machine. Its form can be compared to that of a deep soup plate, with a 20-metre-in-diameter base, vertical walls and a broad rim (1.30 metre wide and 30 metres in diameter).
The lower portion of this sub-component (equivalent to the bottom of the soup plate) has been finalized. All non-destructive examination tests on the welds were completed, as well as all dimensional/tolerance tests.
On the pedestal rim (the soup plate's rim) welding is now 50 percent complete. For the moment, the space between the two is empty—in other words, the plate has a bottom and a rim, but nothing connecting the two.
"By fitting what we call the 'main shell' only after the pedestal ring and the bottom of the base section are installed provides more flexibility for adjustments," explains ITER cryostat engineer Guillaume Vitupier.
Further explanation on the ongoing operations can be found in the gallery below.
