Under contract with the European Domestic Agency, the NKMNOELL-REEL* consortium is manufacturing a pair of cranes for the ITER Assembly Building. These cranes, each with a lifting capacity of 750 metric tons, will work in tandem to transfer component loads of up to 1,500 metric tons along a continuous crane bay between the Tokamak installation area and the Assembly Building.  Each crane will be supported by two giant girders that span the width of the Assembly Building. The first two of these 200-tonne components have left the factory in Spain and are waiting to be loaded at Aviles harbour in the province of Asturias. Two others will follow shortly. Assembly is also underway on the four trolleys (two per crane) that will host 375-tonne hoists. Once all trolley activities are completed, and they have passed factory tests, they will be delivered to the ITER site in May. The scope of the contract concluded in 2013 between the European Domestic Agency and NKMNOELL-REEL includes the design, certification, manufacturing, testing, installation and commissioning of the two heavy-lift cranes, as well as two auxiliary cranes with a lift capacity of 50 tonnes each that will be used for lighter assembly activities and the Tokamak Cargo Lift that will move casks containing components in the Tokamak Building. The assembly cranes will be installed through the roof of the Assembly Building with the aid of a giant crawler crane. * The NKMNOELL-REEL consortium is formed by NKMNoell Special Cranes GmbH, Germany and REEL S.A.S., France (part of Groupe REEL). See the full story on the European Domestic Agency website.

Pipe spool 2D-2002-20 will soon be making the voyage from the port of Hazira, India to the ITER site, packed into a container filled with material destined for the buried installation of part of ITER's cooling water system. Similar shipments will be sent regularly from India over the next year—in all, some 180 containers containing over a thousand individual spool references and associated equipment. When the material arrives on site it will be inspected and then assigned a location in one of ITER's storage areas. At some stage of on-site work—as field contractors refer to detailed technical drawings to plan for the next installation sequences—they will call for this specific reference, which must be released to them on time in order to avoid any delay in construction. This scenario will be repeated in every arena of ITER construction throughout the assembly and installation phase; depending on construction needs, hundreds of items will be released every day from storage and positioned on the platform to be integrated into the ITER machine or plant. With thousands of annual deliveries and millions of coded products stored in facilities both on and off site, it couldn't be done without a sophisticated materials management system. "The major challenge of a project like ITER—with such a huge quantity of material and an execution period that will last much longer than industry average—is managing the timeliness of component deliveries in relation to construction need-dates," says Aaron Shaw, who joined the project just over a year ago as Logistics, Storage & Materials Engineer. "It's a gargantuan task." Having the items on site a minimum of 90 days before their need dates—properly labelled and stored—is a process that begins at least 18 months before delivery. Aaron is working now with the ITER Domestic Agencies and the system technical responsible officers to collect as much information as possible on priority work packages. This includes product information from the supplier (deliverables, identification tags, serial numbers, product characteristics), provisional schedules, drawings, and corresponding ITER reference numbers. Closer to delivery, the data per shipment is further refined to include specific packing lists and shipping information, details which allow him to begin planning storage facility space. "Materials management takes place behind the scenes," says Aaron. "When everything is running smoothly you don't hear about it ... it's only when things go wrong that you do. Good materials management begins with correct data. At this early stage of ITER assembly and installation, we are setting up the systems and processes and making sure they work." Managing the timeliness of component deliveries in relation to construction need-dates will be key in the years ahead. In anticipation of thousands of annual deliveries and millions of coded products stored in facilities both on and off site, the ITER Organization has set up a robust materials management system. Aaron's ally in the organization of many megabytes of data is SmartPlant® Materials, an industry-standard solution that has been configured for the specificities of ITER. A delivery portal has been developed in-house that allows Domestic Agencies to enter equipment data directly for each contract; it's also useable by suppliers and ITER's logistics provider DAHER. And now, thanks to the collaboration of the Project Information System Division, SmartPlant® Materials is linked to the engineering database that stores technical and design data. Jean-Daniel Delaplagne, data management engineer, has been instrumental in this most recent development. All the material data is now crosslinked so that the components are correctly identified, warehoused and properly assigned to construction. "What seemed like a fairly straightforward process at the beginning—developing a portal to bulk upload data to SmartPlant® Materials—turned out to be quite challenging in the end," admits Jean-Daniel. "Tailoring the materials data to the correct business process information and creating a tool to allow the validation and crosschecking of many heterogeneous sources was not simple." The procuring Domestic Agencies (or their suppliers) fill in the information once only and it serves both the ITER Organization and the company planning the international logistics, DAHER. The data is uploaded from the portal to SmartPlant® Materials and automatically linked to the ITER scheduling tool Primavera and the Daher logistics information system DAgeSCOPEâ„¢, providing the equipment material data required for construction and assembly needs and acting as a one-stop shop for all information related to ITER material deliveries. "The collaborative portal helps us to avoid duplication of effort," says Aaron. "In my business construction is king—we have to make sure that no delay is incurred because of materials mismanagement." "Bulk" items, such as valves and cables, will be categorized differently in the materials database than unique items, which correspond to a unique location in the plant or machine and for which no substitutions can be accepted. Data entered well ahead of shipment will also allow storage reservations to be planned according to product requirements (indoor/indoor temperature controlled/sensitive materials storage/outdoor). At the peak of assembly activities, it is estimated that the ITER Organization will need at least 50,000 m² of storage space, meaning that the Facilities, Logistics & Materials group will be managing a number of off-site facilities. "With SmartPlant® Materials, ITER now has a robust material management system in place," concludes Aaron. "The use of the supplier portal will help in having a 'single source of truth,' centralizing material data collection from Domestic Agencies, linking to other databases, aiding in construction planning, and automating processes. As we move forward, it will be a precious aid to logistics, warehousing and construction activities."

Under the terms of a Procurement Arrangement signed with the ITER Organization in 2011, the Indian Domestic Agency is supplying the 54 main stainless steel segments of the ITER cryostat, the giant "thermos" that will completely surround the tokamak, provide structural support, and ensure the thermal insulation of the superconducting magnets. The first segments arrived on site in December.   The scope of the procurement also covers two sub-systems—the torus cryopump housing and rectangular bellows. The design and technical specifications for both sub-systems have now advanced to the point where the dedicated technical annex of the Cryostat Procurement Arrangement—Annex B—is approved for the torus cryopump housing and being agreed for the rectangular bellows between the ITER Organization and Indian Domestic Agency.   These accomplishments, which open the way to procurement activities, would not have been possible without close collaboration, transparent communication and a strong common technical understanding between the ITER Organization, the Indian Domestic Agency and industry.   The torus cryopump housing has a number of functions. It supports the torus cryopumps, connects the cryopumps to the torus vacuum, and provides the volume to dilute hydrogen during the cryopump regeneration, maintaining confinement.   The rectangular bellows will be distributed among all port extensions on the three levels of the cryostat rectangular openings. Weighing between 1.8 tonnes and 5.9 tonnes each, their role is to seal the cryostat and to ensure the confinement of the vacuum between the cryostat and the port cells and also to compensate for relative displacements between the vacuum vessel, the cryostat, and the building. The development of the rectangular bellows was led by the ITER Organization in conjunction with a specialized bellows manufacturer. Extensive analysis work was performed in order to justify the structural integrity and qualification tests were conducted on several full-size prototypes in order to experimentally verify the compliance with the expansion joint project requirements.

Of all the works conducted on the ITER site in 2015, the most spectacular was the construction of the steel structure of the 60-metre high Assembly Building.   This video clip gives us a bird's eye view of the different phases of construction which culminated on 11 September with the raising of the 730-tonne roof structure.

In Korea, manufacturing has begun for one of ITER's largest and most spectacular pieces of machinery: the first of a pair of 22-metre high, 800-tonne Sector Sub-Assembly tools.   "The Sector Sub-Assembly tools are not only imposing in size, but they are actually complex systems, with a lot of sub-components, precision actuators and powerful hydraulic engines," says Hyung-Yeol Yang, ITER Korea's director for advanced technology research.   Standing shoulder to shoulder under the high ceiling of the Assembly Building, the Sector Sub-Assembly tools will suspend each of the nine vacuum vessel sectors in order to install toroidal field coils and thermal shielding. The resulting 1,200-tonne sub-assemblies will be transferred to the Tokamak Complex and integrated into the machine.   On 15 February, the contractor Taekyung Heavy Industry commenced material cutting. The first of the twin Sector Sub-Assembly tools should be ready by October this year for a battery (six months) of factory acceptance tests, followed by delivery to ITER in mid-2017.   The twin giants are but the most spectacular of the 128 purpose-built assembly tools that Korea will procure for the ITER Project.

The 53rd edition of the Culham Summer School will take place from 18 to 29 July 2016. The school provides an introduction to the fundamental principles of plasma physics, together with a broad understanding of its fields of application. Topics cover magnetic and laser confinement fusion, space and astrophysical plasmas and low temperature plasmas. Lecturers are drawn from Culham Centre for Fusion Energy and leading laboratories and university groups from the UK and abroad. All are renowned experts in their fields. Reduced rate 'early bird' registration is open until 1 May. For more information and to book your place, follow this link.