Image of the week
12 pillars and counting
7 Oct 2019
Two rows of pillars have now appeared at the top of the ITER Tokamak Building—12 out of 20 base pillars that will soon be topped by a second level of pillars, and finally the roof structure.
Elements of the crane hall roof structure—first pillars, then roof structure—are lifted at the end of the afternoon and into the night so as not to interfere with the movement of the worksite cranes during the day.
The crawler crane enters into action in late afternoon and continues on into the night, carefully lifting the 28-tonne, 13-metre-tall pillars some 45 metres above the platform to be bolted along either side of the Tokamak Building's concrete structure.
Two rows of 10 are planned. The lower pillars accommodate shelf-like platforms that will support the crane rails as they are extended out beyond the Assembly Hall; the second pillar segments—16-metre-tall upper pillars—will be installed next.
A few hundred metres away, sections of roof frame are being assembled on the ground. A second crawler crane will work in tandem with the first to lift these into place.
But for now, nearly every night a new pillar or two can be seen from the windows of the ITER Headquarters Building ...