ITER and CESI sign support contract

23 Apr 2010 - Sabina Griffith
Standard procedure for a non-standard endeavour: (1. row f. left) Francoise Flament, Head of ITER Contract & Procurement Division, Deputy Director-General Yong-Hwan Kim and CESI Director Domenico Villani; Ivone Benfatto, head of the ITER Electrical Engineering Division; CESI Marketing Manager Andrea Meola; and Marino Valisi.

Taking into account the complexity of the ITER Project and the importance that electrical equipment and devices will have on its success, quality control and quality assurance will be key. Today, the ITER Organization signed a contract with the Italian company CESI for the supply of engineering and consultancy support. CESI will help the ITER Organization to make sure that all the electrical, power conversion and power electronic components to be installed during the construction of ITER conform to the necessary standards and requirements.

"This contract with ITER is a new experience for us," says Domenico Villani, Director of the CESI Energy Division. "Many of the components we will have to deal with are standard, but their applications will be far from standard. Be assured that we will put all of our 50 years of experience into this cooperation."

For one member of the CESI delegation that came to Cadarache today to sign the contract, Marino Valisi, working with the ITER Project will be a "step back to the future." In 1976, the nuclear engineer started his career in the Microwave Measuring Group set up at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Garching, Germany. "That was a long time ago," Valisi said, shrugging his shoulders, "almost Jurassic Fusion."