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13th toroidal field coil arrives from Europe

The toroidal field coil procurement effort has been one of the longest of the ITER program, initiated by Procurement Arrangements signed in 2007 and 2008. Manufacturing is nearly completed.
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The 330-tonne TF17 was delivered early on 6 May 2022 after four nights on the ITER Itinerary. Approximately 140 "highly exceptional loads" have been delivered to ITER since 2015. (See more at /transport.)
Six Domestic Agencies took part in the procurement of over 100,000 km of niobium-tin superconducting strand (China, Europe, Japan, Korea, Russia and the United States); now, Europe and Japan are completing the fabrication and testing of 18 toroidal field coils plus one spare. Each coil is made up of a superconducting winding pack and surrounding stainless steel coil case.

Thirteen toroidal field coils have already arrived on site including coil #17 (TF17), delivered last Friday 6 May by the European Domestic Agency. Ninety-nine percent of the total manufacturing scope has been completed.

Once at ITER, the toroidal field coils are either stored or moved to a staging area to be prepared for handling. The teams carry out a variety of mechanical preparatory activities such as the welding of cooling pipes and the attachment of clamps/interfaces.

When their turn comes in the assembly sequence, the D-shaped coils are associated (by pair) with one vacuum vessel sector. Coils TF12 and TF13, from Japan, were the first to be assembled with vacuum vessel sector #6 on specialized tooling in the Assembly Hall, forming the first sub-section of the ITER vacuum vessel. (See related article in this issue.) A second sub-assembly operation is underway that will associate European coil TF9 and Japanese coil TF8 with vacuum vessel sector #1(7).

The delivery of six more coils—three from Europe and three from Japan—will complete the toroidal field coil procurement program.