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Busy summer time

31 Jul 2009 - Yong-Hwan Kim, Deputy Director-General, CEP Deptartment
Yong Hwan Kim, ITER Deputy Director-General

The Department for Central Engineering & Plant Support (CEP) has made good progress in the last few months, including the signature of the Tokamak Cooling Water System Procurement Arrangement—the first phased Procurement Arrangement in our Department. We are pushing hard to finalize the additional Procurement Arrangements for the steady state (SSEN) and pulsed power (PPEN) electrical networks, the component and chilled water systems (CCWS) and the heat rejection system (HRS) this year.

CEP is currently working on other high-priority tasks such as the Preliminary Safety Report (RPrS) update—part of ITER's nuclear licensing process—as well as support for building Procurement Arrangements, Baseline documentation, the resource-loaded schedule, and the risk assessment and mitigation plan. This work should be finished in two to three months time to meet the ITER Organization construction schedule. In light of this objective, all the CEP technical groups regularly meet with the Responsible Officers in the Safety, Building and Project Offices to update and finalize the input documents. The RPrS encompasses a broad range of issues including tritium safety, detritiation, radwaste treatment, earthquake and fire safety; some of which require associated R&D tasks to satisfy the requests from the French nuclear regulator.

The ITER Council endorsed the phased approach to the completion of ITER construction and the target date for first plasma of the end of 2018, while maintaining planned operation with deuterium and tritium fuels for 2026. Following this decision, the Integrated Project Schedule (IPS) is currently being updated at the system level in accordance with the changed schedule.

A series of conceptual design reviews are ongoing. Those for the Hot Cell, the SSEN, and the Tokamak cooling water system (TCWS) were completed as scheduled. Final conceptual design reviews for the CCWS and the HRS systems are scheduled for early September.

Three Integrated Product Teams (IPTs) are in operation in the areas of electrical power supply, cryoplant and distribution, and fuel cycle. These teams were formed to establish a closer working relationship between the ITER Organization and the Domestic Agencies. Monthly in-person or video conferencing meetings are held to finalize the organization and work plan of each IPT in cooperation with the Domestic Agencies.

The ITER Vacuum Handbook and its welding attachment were finalized and approved by the ITER Organization last month. These were presented at the ITER Organization-Domestic Agency meeting where the requirements for successful construction of one of the largest and most complex vacuum systems were emphasized.

Challenging work remains in the areas of leak localization and cable management. Following the recent workshop with related DA officers and experts, the mid-term R&D strategy for leak localization was developed and several R&D tasks will be launched in coming months. Cable management is also a very important area; the ITER Organization is responsible for the establishment of applicable codes and cable standards, the setting up and management of the cable database, and the design and installation of cable raceways. Last week an internal meeting was held, with the related Responsible Officers and industry experts, to formulate this strategy. We plan to award contracts for cable management support, including the production of routing diagrams and space allocation, in 2010.

We all know that Year 2009 will be the year of the finalization of the new baseline design and resource-loaded schedule. We expect that we can strengthen the construction work, according to the updated schedule, with the full support from the Members from 2010.

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