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Buildings

The Tokamak Complex is fully painted

29 Oct 2024

Five years and 40 specialists—that is what it took for European Domestic Agency contractors to completely cover the interior walls of the Tokamak Complex with several layers of specially formulated paint.

The Diagnostics, Tokamak and Tritium Buildings—known together as the Tokamak Complex—are now fully painted. Some 200,000 m² of walls were coated over five years with several layers of a special radiation-resistant, non-flammable white paint by European Domestic Agency contractor GDES (Spain), with technical and administrative support by Engage and EnergHIA.

With a structure the size of the ITER Tokamak Complex, the topline numbers usually stand out the most. Its total weight, for example (more than 400,000 tonnes). Or the amount of concrete required for its construction (100,000 cubic metres). But the scale of the building project can also be measured in the many smaller tasks that were required to prepare the Complex for the installation of equipment. 

One example is the final painting of interior surfaces. In the Diagnostics Building, paint provides for cleanliness and a dust-free environment. In the Tritium and Tokamak buildings, it is an element of nuclear safety. In nuclear buildings, the coating on the floors, walls and ceilings must present a perfectly smooth surface in order to be decontaminated in case of an incident or accident. 

The European Domestic Agency (Fusion for Energy, F4E)—which, as part of its commitments to the project, has built nearly all of the platform buildings and site infrastructure—assembled the team to coat 200,000 m² of walls with several coats of specially formulated white paint. Since 2019, approximately 40 specialists from Spanish company GDES, with support from Engage and EnergHIA, proceeded room by room and floor by floor, first sandblasting the walls to leave a texture without cracks or pores for proper adherence, then applying several coats. 

The last job was completed in the Tritium Building earlier this month.

Read the full report on the Fusion for Energy website.

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