Bolting a symbolic piece of steel
It's a small piece of steel: 30 centimetres long, 10 centimetres wide and 3 centimetres thick, a support plate that, together with several others, will hold the ring-shaped supporting structure for the high-field protection panels of the Tore Supra vacuum vessel.
However small and unassuming, the piece of steel was invested with strong symbolic value on Monday 6 October as it became the first component to be integrated as part of the WEST project—a program of radical transformation that will turn the 30-year-old CEA-Euratom tokamak into a test bench for one of the most critical ITER components, the divertor.
The symbolic importance was emphasized by the choice of "workers" for the bolting job: Gabriele Fioni, director of CEA's Physical Sciences Division; Alain Bécoulet, director of CEA's Magnetic Fusion Research Institute (IRFM); Jérôme Bucalossi, head of the WEST project and Osamu Motojima, Director-General of the ITER Organization.