First CODAC command issued
Pressure and levels? Nominal. Valves? Open. Protections? In place. As all “permissives” are go , the process can now be activated. A click of a mouse and—in a building more than half a kilometre away—a powerful pump kicks in and water starts rushing into one of the cooling loops of the reactive power compensation installation. On Thursday 19 December, during an event that brought together a few dozen ITER and Fusion for Energy (European Domestic agency) staff along with contractors, the ITER main control room issued its first CODAC (Control, Data Access and Communication) command to a plant system, a decisive milestone towards tokamak operation.
Across the ITER platform, several temporary control rooms, each dedicated to one plant system, are already operational. In the coming year, they will progressively be folded into the main control room, an approximately 750-square-metre space on the first floor of the Control Building.
For the moment, only one desk is occupied and three screens are lit. When full science operation starts, the room will be home to some 80 operators, engineers and researchers monitoring millions of plasma, tokamak and plant system parameters in real-time. Raising their eyes from their computer screens, they will be able to read a 120-square-metre mosaic of screens displaying the installation’s overall status. Spectacular…
“This room will be seen around the world. It was built to realize fusion energy and this is where it will happen,” said Tim Luce, former Chief Scientist for ITER, now Deputy Head of the Construction Project. Seven years have elapsed since the first “pencil and paper” drawings of the room and building, “seven years to get to the end of the beginning,” mused Luce. The construction of the Control Building, under Europe’s responsibility, was an exercise in “collaborative intelligence, openness and pragmatism,” added Romaric Darbour, Fusion for Energy deputy head of the Buildings and Site Management Programme.
An important milestone for all, the first CODAC command issued from the main control room carried a special and personal significance for one of the people present: more than 16 years ago, Anders Wallander, fresh from a two-decade stint with the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Munich and the Chilean Andes, joined ITER to implement the Control, Data Access and Communication system—“a system of systems” designed to play conductor to ITER operation. All instruments are not playing yet, but one million “process variables,” out of a total of 5 million, are already online. Anders’ journey from the stars in heaven to the future star in the machine is nearing completion.
In March, the European Domestic Agency Fusion for Energy plans to hand the Control Building over to the ITER Organization.
Click here to view a short video of the event.
