Down under

It has been close to five months since the first vacuum vessel module was installed in the Tokamak pit. The view from above is by now familiar: a huge D-shaped steel structure hugging the central column and dwarfing everything around it. Less familiar is the underground scene, at the cryostat base level. There, bathed in yellow light, workers are busy carrying out preservation activities on the two poloidal field coils that have been installed, PF6 and PF5. On the left side of this image, white polystyrene panels have been installed to protect the openings in PF6 and prevent the accumulation of dust. Other activities "down under" include the instrumentation of the 18 toroidal field coil gravity supports.