Home away from home
1 May 2014
The 110 metre long, 44 metre wide and 27 metre tall building is scheduled to be handed over to the Indian Domestic Agency in August.
It was only one year ago, on 19 April 2013, that the ITER Organization officially made a small tract of land on the ITER platform available to the Indian Domestic Agency to build a temporary workshop—a Little India where the ITER cryostat, part of India's in-kind contribution to the Project, would be assembled.
On 25 April, accompanied by ITER DDG Rem Haange (first from right), the head of the Indian Domestic Agency, Shishir Deshpande (second from left), paid a visit to the Cryostat Workshop. He's seen here with Michel Fayard, APAVE; Bharat Doshi, ITER and Ujjwal Baruah, Indian Domestic Agency (from left to right).
Three months later in June, coconuts were symbolically broken over the site, calling on the blessing of Ganesha, the elephant-headed deity "Remover of Obstacles."
From then on, things went amazingly fast. In September 2013, half of the steel columns forming the building's skeleton were in place; one month ago in March the 200-tonne gantry crane was installed inside the completed structure. And last week, when the head of the Indian Domestic Agency, Shishir Deshpande, paid a visit, the place had an almost homey feeling ...
There's still some work to be done before the building is fully completed in mid-July. Under supervision from Currie & Brown, the contract engineer for Larsen & Toubro (the company responsible for the construction of both cryostat and Cryostat Workshop), the French company Spie Batignolles is busy connecting the large heat pumps that will cool down the workshop and finalizing the electrical works.
The final layer of the concrete floor slab, an extra 20 cm, will be poured in the coming weeks to allow commissioning tests (HVAC, electrical) to begin. The 200-tonne gantry crane will be load-tested towards the end of May, before the building is handed over to the Indian Domestic Agency in August.