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Procurement completed

4th Korean vacuum vessel sector delivered

12 Nov 2024

In November 2008, Kijung Jung, head of the Korean Domestic Agency, signed the Procurement Arrangement for two vacuum vessel sectors for the ITER tokamak. Later, it would take on another two sectors under direct ITER Organization contract through a Delegation Agreement. Sixteen years and a formidable industrial venture later, Kijung stood in the night, smiling, next to a powerful transport trailer warming its engines before taking to the road. On the trailer platform towered what looked like an oversize cabin—the transport container for the fourth and last vacuum vessel sector procured by Korea.

The fourth and last vacuum vessel sector from Korea is ready to leave the staging area and take to the road for the last leg of its long journey from the Hyundai Heavy Industries shipyard. After leaving Ulsan, the load travelled round the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of the African continent and sailed all the way north to the Strait of Gibraltar and into the Mediterranean Sea.

The four Korean vacuum vessel sectors were manufactured by Hyundai Heavy Industries at the company's giant shipyard in Ulsan, on the eastern coast of the peninsula. Established 50 years ago, the yard puts out more than one hundred large ships per year (tankers, container ships, etc.) and accounts for 15 percent of the world's shipbuilding capacity.

This experience, combined with the know-how acquired in the manufacturing of the core components of the KSTAR tokamak in the early 2000s, enabled the Korean company to rise to the unique challenge of a first-of-a-kind, extremely demanding piece of high technology.

It takes a large team of specialists to ensure that the precious component will be safely delivered to ITER. Head of the Korean Domestic Agency Kijung Jung, who signed the procurement arrangement in November 2008, is standing in the centre of the group.

Work on the first of the four massive components began in October 2012 with high-pressure water jet cutting to shape 2 x 6 metre, 60-millimetre-thick steel plates. Press forming followed, then heat treatment to release the tension inside the metal, machining, welding, drilling (hundreds of holes, at 11 hours of drilling per hole!) and eventually assembling and welding the four segments and set of ports that form a finalized vacuum vessel sector.

A first sector (#6) came off the production line in April 2020 and was delivered to ITER the following August. The last sector (#1) took to the sea on 24 August 2024 and, after rounding the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of the African continent and sailing all the way north to the Strait of Gibraltar and into the Mediterranean, passed through the ITER gates last Friday 8 November. And a smiling Kijung Jung was there to greet it.

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