Like pushing a camel through the eye of a needle

Installing and exchanging one of the 54 ITER divertor cassettes is not a simple in-out operation. In fact, the access route is such that the delicate plasma-facing surfaces of the divertor have to pass within a few centimetres of the vacuum vessel surfaces. The manoeuvring of these structures requires the use of special remote handling techniques—and a very special test facility on which to test and develop these techniques. The facility is called the Divertor Test Platform 2, or DTP2 for short. It is located in Tampere, Finland and operated by VTT and Tampere University of Technology on behalf of the European Domestic Agency.