After a year-long international tender process, the ITER Organization has selected the Construction Management-as-Agent contractor that will manage and coordinate the assembly and installation of the ITER Tokamak and associated plant systems. On Monday 27 June, ITER Director-General Bernard Bigot signed a ten-year EUR 174 million contract with the MOMENTUM joint venture led by Amec Foster Wheeler (UK) in partnership with Assystem (France) and KEPCO Engineering and Construction (Korea).   "We are proud to continue this journey with you and we thank you for putting your faith in us," said Tom Jones, the vice-president for Business Development of Amec Foster Wheeler Nuclear, speaking on behalf of the MOMENTUM joint venture.   The role of MOMENTUM will be to provide the services, systems and processes to manage work execution to the highest international standards of quality and safety.   The ITER Organization will place a series of work contracts for the assembly of the Tokamak machine and the mechanical and electrical installation of the plant systems; in addition, Domestic Agencies will also have their own contracts for some plant installation works. The MOMENTUM joint venture will work closely with the ITER Organization to coordinate all work carried out under the different contractors. Some 2,000 workers are expected on site during the peak of assembly and installation activities.   Services included within the scope of the Construction Management-as-Agent include contract management, configuration management, project management, construction preparation, site coordination, works supervision, and activities leading up to mechanical completion.   Each of the MOMENTUM joint venture partners has a proven track record in delivering complex construction projects in the nuclear, oil and gas, aerospace, pharmaceutical and mining sectors.   "The role of the Construction Management-as-Agent is absolutely central to the success of the ITER Project," said ITER Director-General Bigot. "And since fusion holds so much potential as an environmentally clean and virtually limitless, safe source of energy, the stakes of success for the seven ITER Members are very high. With the expertise represented by the MOMENTUM joint venture, we feel confident that the assembly and installation of the ITER facility will meet its objectives: delivery on time and on budget with the highest standards of quality."   Read the press release in English and French.

The main elements of the 1,500-tonne double overhead bridge crane—four girders and their corresponding trolleys—are now in place in the Assembly Hall. The big red crawler crane has been dismantled and is on its way to Sweden, where a 330-tonne "sphere" for liquid gas storage is waiting for a lift. The most spectacular part of the operation is over. However, a considerable amount of work remains to be done, most of it at height, to finalize cabling connections, platform and walkway fittings, and the like--the "finishing" activities of the bridge crane installation.   By late September or early October, the two auxiliary cranes, each with a lifting capacity of 50 metric tonnes, will be delivered and installed. This time, there will be no need for a monster crawler crane operating from outside the building ...   Preliminary testing and commissioning are scheduled to begin in January/February 2017 for the large crane, and a few months later for the smaller one.

One by one the elements that make up the base of the ITER cryostat—the single largest load of Tokamak assembly—are being delivered to the ITER site from India and safely stored in the Cryostat Workshop. Twelve segments were delivered in December 2015 for tier 1 of the 1,250-tonne base section. Three further segments, weighing approximately 120 tonnes each and representing half of the elements needed to assemble tier 2, arrived at ITER in the early hours of Friday 24 June.   Work will begin this week on the assembly of the first support and transport frame—one of a set of three large steel structures that will support components, jigs and fixtures during the cryostat assembly process. The 30 x 30 metre frames will also act as transporters for the completed cryostat sections.   By mid-July, the welding machines should be installed in the Cryostat Workshop in time for welding operations to begin in August.   The final three segments of the cryostat base are scheduled for delivery in the first week of September.

The fabrication of poloidal field coil #1 (PF1)—one of ITER's six ring-shaped magnets—is in progress at the Srednenevsky Shipbuilding Plant in Saint Petersburg, Russia, where specialists from JSC "SNSP" and the Efremov Institute (NIIEFA) are winding the second double pancake of the future coil.   Poloidal field coils are built from niobium-titanium (NbTi) superconductors that are wound into flat coils called pancakes. Winding is a multistage process during which conductor from two spools ("double-hand") is wrapped with insulating tape and wound into the dimensions corresponding to each coil.   Because they are key to the successful operation of the machine, the magnets are subject to strict ITER Organization requirements at every stage of the manufacturing process, from qualifying materials to controlling the properties of the finished items. The Russian specialists first received the green light on a full-scale prototype double pancake before starting serial production.   Most of the winding equipment has been designed, manufactured, and tested at the Efremov Institute, which also developed some of the poloidal field coil manufacturing processes; JSC "SNSP" has contributed a number of science-based technologies. In 2014, all equipment was transported to the Srednenevsky Shipbuilding Plant, located in an area which is a well suited to the needs of transporting the completed component.   Eight double pancakes will be stacked to form the final coil, which will weigh 300 tonnes.

No doubt, football reigns in France these days—and in Paris in particular. Even the Eiffel Tower sports the competition symbol, visible from afar. But this week the French capital is also the focus of the nuclear community, which gathers beginning Tuesday 28 June for the World Nuclear Exhibition, the world's largest show case for nuclear technology. ITER will hold up the fusion flag with a new exhibition booth at Stand 2B-S23.  One day before the World Nuclear Exhibition officially opens its gates, around 500 students and young professionals from the field of nuclear energy convened for the sixth edition of the Atoms for the Future conference, an annual event organized by the French Nuclear Society Young Generation Network. For the first time in the event's short history, fusion took to the Atoms for the Future stage, with ITER senior engineer Guenter Janeschitz invited to explain the project's goals and status. The young audience appreciated the 30-minute foray into fusion and wasn't shy about asking questions on public acceptance, advanced structural materials, timescales and recruitment ... Twenty-five of the participants also accepted the invitation to come and see the ITER construction site with their own eyes later this week.

The results of the "Brexit" referendum in the United Kingdom are raising many questions throughout Europe and the world, and of course, within ITER.   As the United Kingdom will remain part of the European Union until negotiations are concluded and ratified—a process that could take many years—its relation with ITER, for the present, will not be affected. The referendum results will not create any near-term changes in the Organization's plans or projections (e.g., related to schedule and resources), nor does ITER anticipate any changes in how procurement contracts or the employment contracts of United Kingdom staff are treated.   European membership in ITER is through EURATOM, an agreement that was established in 1957 and is legally distinct from the European Union. EURATOM, which has the same membership as the European Union, has one "associated state" —Switzerland, who is an active participant in the ITER Project.   From a broader point of view, science and technology collaborations tend to be less politically vulnerable to political change than some other types of collaboration. ITER has already shown itself to be a stable collaboration, unaffected by political tensions that may arise from time to time between its Members.   So what does Brexit mean for ITER? For now, and probably for the coming years ... business as usual.

In June, the Budker Institute in Russia was host to two meetings on ITER diagnostics, with at least 70 international specialists attending. The members of the Diagnostics Topical Group, ITPA (International Tokamak Physics Activity) met for the 30th time to discuss a range of internationally coordinated research areas that are important to the development of ITER and fusion diagnostic systems. Topics included progress on diagnostic mirrors, which must withstand conditions close to the high-temperature plasma; diagnostics for alpha particles; plasma wall reflections; and plasma control. In parallel, a meeting on port integration reunited several Russian organizations that are—like the Budker Institute—involved in the engineering integration of diagnostics into the ITER port plugs. In addition to diagnostic engineering, the Budker Institute plays a key part in the development of high-tech electron equipment, research into the investigation of high-temperature plasma on first-wall materials, and the development, manufacturing, and testing of equipment for the ITER machine. Michal Walsh, head of the Port Plugs & Diagnostics Integration Division at ITER, toured the host facilities in the company of the ITPA members. "Given the technical potential of this research centre and our successful cooperation to date, I look forward to continued cooperation in the future." -- Alla Skovorodina, Budker Institute