Pulsing power through the project
20 Jun 2016
The gathering was held by the massive PPEN transformer in the presence of Hejun Yin, the Chinese Vice-Minister of Science and Technology (MOST) who headed his country's delegation to the ITER Council.
Any component that reaches the ITER site is the tangible result of a sustained and coordinated effort—first involving the ITER Organization, the providing Domestic Agency and industrial contractors during the design and fabrication phase ... and then, once the component is ready for shipment, associating a local transporter, ITER's international logistics provider DAHER, Agence Iter France and finally Europe, the Member that covers the cost of transportation from the port of unloading to the ITER site.
Early in the morning of Thursday 16 June, ITER Council members left their chamber for a moment to gather around the large transformer destined for ITER's pulsed power electrical network (PPEN) that had arrived from China the day before. The 14-metre-long, 300-tonne component rising 5 metres above the ITER platform offered a perfect illustration of what the global ITER collaboration now achieves on a daily basis.
"So long as we continue to make concerted efforts together, as one team, I firmly believe that our common project will advance at the required pace," said Hejun Yin, the Chinese Vice-Minister of Science and Technology (MOST) who led his country's delegation to the Eighteenth Meeting of the ITER Council.
The gathering was of particular significance as the ITER Council had just decided, unanimously, to approve the updated schedule to First Plasma—a schedule for which, said ITER Director-General Bernard Bigot, "each one of us has to feel ownership and personal accountability."