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Machine assembly

Europe completes another vacuum vessel sector

10 Mar 2025

The European Domestic Agency Fusion for Energy (F4E) and subcontractors Ansaldo Nucleare, Westinghouse and Walter Tosto have completed all manufacturing activities on vacuum vessel sector #4. It will depart from Italy later this month.

Sector #4 lies on its side in the workshop of Walter Tosto in Ortona, Italy. Fusion for Energy has been collaborating with the AMW consortium for ten years to produce five of the nine vacuum vessel sectors required by ITER. ©Walter Tosto

The exterior is smooth and polished, like that of an undersea vehicle or a spacecraft. The interior surfaces are a patchwork of interfacing elements—cartridges and other "connectors" designed to receive the components, like the blanket, that will face the plasma. And projecting out in two locations are the port stubs and port stub extensions that will create a corridor of connection between the exterior wall of the vacuum vessel and the cryostat a few metres away.

The ITER vacuum vessel is made up of nine of these 40° sectors—each one slightly unique—that will be welded together along their bevel joint regions to form a torus-shaped plasma chamber. Each one is years in the making. Fusion for Energy, for example, has been collaborating with the AMW consortium for more than a decade, involving at least 150 professionals from 15 companies across Europe. According to their calculations, the completion of sector #4 has demanded 20,000 hours of machining and 100,000 hours of welding.

The poster below shows how segments become a sector, and how a sector is integrated into the final torus. (It can be downloaded here.)

In a short ceremony celebrating the completion of sector #4 Marc Lachaise, Director of Fusion for Energy, stated: “The completion of the second European sector of ITER’s vacuum vessel demonstrates yet again the exceptional manufacturing skills of our industry and its ability to apply quickly lessons learned from the first sector. It also illustrates how the European Union, through its participation in the biggest international fusion project, can successfully involve medium-sized companies, help them grow, and target overseas markets."

Europe's first sector was delivered in October 2024. Production continues on Europe’s remaining three sectors, #9, #3 and #2, which will arrive over the next two years.

See the full report on the Fusion for Energy website.

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