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Pending installation

Ring coil placed in storage

1 Feb 2021
A long journey from China, followed by a month-long cold bath and now the perspective of a six-week rest in storage—this is what life has been like, so far, for poloidal field coil #6.
PF6_into_storage_1b.jpg
On Wednesday 27 January, the massive component was transferred from the Poloidal Field Coils Winding Facility on site to a nearby storage facility.
On Wednesday 27 January, the massive component was transferred from the European winding facility on site, where it had successfully completed cold tests, to a storage facility where it will patiently wait for its turn in the assembly sequence of the ITER machine.

Along with the physical move came a change of ownership, as the coil was handed over by the European Domestic Agency Fusion for Energy, responsible for its procurement, to the ITER Organization, in charge of machine assembly.

Manufactured in China under a European contract, the coil was more than eight years in fabrication. It is the second smallest of the six ITER ring-shaped magnets (11.5 metres in diameter) but, at 400 tonnes, is by far the heaviest.

PF6_into_storage_9a.jpg
The door is wide and so is the coil... The component will remain in storage for about six weeks before being lowered into the Tokamak assembly pit.

The coil was delivered to ITER in June 2020 and was the first to be cold-tested on site. Some light equipment work (such as the addition of protective covers) will be performed while the component is in storage and before it takes one last (short) trip in April to be lowered into the assembly pit.

For a few years, the coil will sit at the bottom of the pit on temporary supports before being raised to its final position towards the end of the assembly process when all 18 toroidal field coils and 9 vacuum vessel sectors have been installed.

Read more  about the transfer on the Fusion for Energy website.

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