ITER
PROGRESS IN PICTURES
June 2014

ITER
PROGRESS IN PICTURES
June 201401

A star will be born
A new star will soon be born, a star unlike any other… a man-made star. ITER – theLatin word for “The Way” – will light up in the early years of the coming decade.
From a scientific and technological point of view, it will be one of humankind’s
historic achievements. The creation of an artificial star and the tapping of thetremendous amounts of energy produced could forever alter the course of civilization.

02

The ITER Project, an unprecedented international collaboration that brings together
China, the European Union, India, Japan, Korea, Russia and the United States, is theculmination of decades of research and years of diplomatic negotiation. What was theaspiration of three generations of physicists is now the reality of the hundreds ofscientists, engineers and labourers working in southern France where the ITER
installation is under construction.
The seven ITER Members, representing half the world’s population, share theresponsibility for building the ITER machine and facilities. Every Member, essentially, isinvolved in every system.
As buildings rise on the ITER platform (part of European procurement, pages 4 to15),
component manufacturing advances in ITER Member factories (pages 21 to 41).
This booklet aims to take you into the heart of ITER, from the rolling hills of Provence
to factories on three continents, where men and women from 35 nations are bent on
realizing one of mankind’s most enduring dreams: capturing the fire of the stars andmaking it available to humanity for the millennia to come.

The ITER Tokamak

The ITER machine is a tokamak, the Russian
acronym for Toroidal Chamber, Magnetic Coils.
Tokamaks were developed in the 1960s at a time
when nations were experimenting with all kinds ofdifferent systems to reproduce the nuclear
reactions at work in the core of the Sun and stars.
A tokamak, like a star, is designed to fuse lightatoms into heavier ones. A tokamak is amagnificent tribute to Albert Einstein’s E=mc2: thetiny loss of mass that results from the fusion
process translates into a huge quantity of energy.
One gram of fusion fuel (the hydrogen isotopes
deuterium and tritium) generates as much poweras eight tons of oil.
ITER will be by far the largest and mostcomplex tokamak ever built. Designed from theexperience accumulated by hundreds of fusion
machines throughout the world, it will
demonstrate that fusion energy is scientificallyand technologically feasible.
WeightHeightDiameter

Plasma volume© US ITER

Temperature at plasma core
Fusion power

23,000 metric tons
~30 metres~30 metres

840m3

150 000 000oC

500MW

03

Site map

04

On 28 June 2005, the ITER Members unanimously agree on the site proposed by Europe: a 180-hectare stretch of land located in the Durance River Valley some
75 kilometres north of Marseille. Preparation work on the ITER site begins in January 2007. Over two years a 42-hectare platform is cleared, levelled and readiedfor the construction work that begins in earnest in the summer of 2010.

The ITER site, looking north05

Looking north over the ITER worksite. April 2014

16 new building projects launched in 201406

No fewer than 16 building projects will be set into motion in 2014. The first projects on the list: the Site Services Building in the northeast corner of the platform
and the 60-metre-tall Assembly Building adjacent to the Tokamak Seismic Pit. April 2014

Work in progress, June 201407

The heart of activity: the Tokamak Seismic Pit (centre left), the Assembly Building worksite (centre right) and the ITER Headquarters (background). June 2014

The Tokamak Pit seismic protection system

08

The three buildings of the Tokamak Complex will share a common foundation. In case of a seismic event, 493 steel and rubber seismic pads will absorb ground motion
and preserve the integrity and safety of the installation. July 2012

Tokamak Complex slab preparation

09

The antiseismic columns and pads are hidden from view by the formwork and reinforcement underway for the next-level basemat. The B2 slab will support the
400,000-ton Tokamak Complex. September 2013

First concrete for the Diagnostics Building

10

The Diagnostics Building will be situated at one end of the Seismic Pit. Work begins to pour the first of three basemat segments before dawn on 11 December 2013;
the Diagnostics Building slab is completed in February 2014.

First concrete for the Tritium Building

11

Concrete pouring for the Tritium Building slab (opposite the Diagnostics Building) begins on 19 March 2014. Nearly 1,000 m³ of concrete are employed to fill a 638 m²
plot in the northeast corner of the Seismic Pit. March 2014

Under the Tokamak

12

Rebar patterns are at their most complex in the centre of the Seismic Pit, where they will be part of the basemat supporting the ITER Tokamak. There, orthoradial(circular) and orthogonal (right-angled) rebar arrangements interface. April 2014

The Seismic Pit from above

13

The Tokamak Complex is a suite of three buildings on a common foundation. On the left, the finished basemat slab of the Diagnostics Building. On the right,
pouring is underway on the Tritium Building slab. In the central area, the circular pattern of rebar that will support the machine. April 2014

The Poloidal Field Coils Winding Facility

14

Too large to travel by road, four out of the Tokamak’s six ring-shaped magnets (poloidal field coils) will be manufactured by Europe on site in this 257-metre-long,
49-metre-wide building. October 2012

A Sun-like spreader beam

15

Inside the Poloidal Field Coils Winding Facility, this large, sun-like, spreader beam will permit the very careful and steady transport of the poloidal field coils during
the winding and assembly process. It will handle loads up to 50 tons.

The Cryostat Workshop

16

India is responsible for the construction of the large steel-framed temporary Cryostat Workshop where the four main sections of the ITER cryostat – a huge“refrigerator” in which the Tokamak will be enclosed – will be assembled from 54 segments. January 2014

Installation of the Cryostat Workshop crane17

The first elements of the Cryostat Workshop gantry crane are delivered on site. With a lifting capacity of 200 tons (plus an auxiliary 50-ton hook) the crane will be
used to lift and handle the 54 cryostat segments that will arrive from India. February 2014

18

Pre-machining is performed on Europe’s first series production radial plate at CNIM, France. May 2014

A

Manufacturing

unique aspect of ITER implementation is the in-kindprocurement system that was established at theonset of the project. Instead of contributing purely
financial resources, China, the European Union, India,
Japan, Korea, Russia and the United States will be
providing 90% of their contributions in the form ofmachine components, systems and – in the case ofEurope – buildings.
Procurement packages are shared equally (~ 9% of the total
value) between China, India, Japan, Korea, Russia and theUnited States; Europe’s share, as Host Member, is ~ 45%.
The in-kind procurement process forms the core of ITER
founding philosophy, offering the ITER Members invaluable
experience in the manufacturing of components for a fusion
installation. By contributing to the construction of theexperimental machine, the ITER Members are creating thetechnological and industrial basis for the commercial fusion
reactors of the future.

19

Who manufactures what?
Feeders (31)CryostatPage 22

Page 16, 17, 27

Toroidal Field Coils (18)Thermal Shield
Page 44

Page 25, 30, 32, 33, 34, 35, 46

20

Poloidal Field Coils (6)Page 14, 15, 21, 46

Pellet Injection & Disruption Mitigation

Page 51

Correction Coils (18)Page 23
Central Solenoid (6)Page 31, 35, 49

Vacuum Vessel
Page 24, 28, 43, 45, 48

Blanket

Cooling Water System

Divertor

Page 50

Page 37, 47

Not all systems and contributions are represented in this illustration.

China delivers dummy conductor

21

The ITER magnet system requires close to 2,800 metric tons of superconducting coils. Before launching actual fabrication, prototypes and “dummies” need to be
produced. Here, China delivers a first batch of dummy conductor to the Poloidal Field Coil Winding Facility for fabrication process testing. June 2013

Magnet feeders

22

For the magnet feeders, which bring electrical power and cryogens to the magnets, coil terminal boxes provide housing for the connections of the system.
Machining was completed by Shanghai Aerospace Equipment in China for the first of 31 boxes in April 2014. The first box is now undergoing integral testing at
the Institute of Plasma Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (ASIPP).

Correction coils

23

Eighteen correction coils will be installed on ITER to correct the local imperfections of the magnetic fields. Following mockup development (pictured),manufacturing is scheduled to begin on the first correction coil in the summer of 2014 at the Institute of Plasma Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (ASIPP).

Prototypes for the vacuum vessel

24

Europe is responsible for seven of the nine sectors that make up the ITER vacuum vessel. A prototype, one-third of the size of the actual component, is currently
undergoing bend-testing in Italy. © Walter Tosto

Laser welding robots at work on a “double pancake”

25

Toroidal field coil conductors will be shaped into layers called double pancakes, seven of which will constitute one toroidal field winding pack. Pictured, three laser
welding robots work simultaneously on the double pancake cover plates.

R&D for neutral beam injection

26

The ELISE experiment in Garching, Germany, is contributing to the development of one of ITER’s main heating systems – neutral beam heating – which will injecthigh energy particles into the plasma in order to heat it up to the temperature necessary for fusion to occur. © Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP)Real-scale prototypes for the cryostat

27

In Hazira, on the northwestern coast of India, fabrication of real-scale prototypes for the cryostat has begun. Pictured here is a portion of the horizontal plate (60° sector)
for the cryostat base section, made of 105-mm-thick stainless steel.

8,000 in-wall shielding components

28This in-wall shielding block assembly (600 mm long, 180 mm wide and 140 mm high) will be installed in the vacuum vessel. India will produce approximately 8,000
such components of different types and sizes and send them to Europe and Korea for further assembly into the vacuum vessel sectors.

Testing high voltage power supplies

29

At ITER India, the high voltage power supply for ion cyclotron radio frequency heating (ICRH) is readied for testing.

Spooling toroidal field conductor

30

Upon the completion of jacketing, 760-metre-long toroidal field conductor unit lengths are spooled to facilitate transportation. In the image, three unit lengths
are prepared for transport at the Wakamatsu factory, Nippon Steel & Sumikin Engineering.

Manufacturing central solenoid (CS) conductor

31

Since 2012, CS conductors have been manufactured at the Wakamatsu factory, Nippon Steel & Sumikin Engineering. Here, a CS conductor is being manufactured
and spooled in a diameter of 4 m for transportation to US.

Qualifying toroidal field coil winding

32

ITER’s 360-ton toroidal field magnets will be the largest and most powerful superconducting magnets ever manufactured. The magnet coils are made from seven“double pancakes” containing the insulated niobium-tin conductor. Here, at Mitsubishi Heavy Industry’s Futami factory, winding is completed on a dummy double
pancake – the last qualification step before starting series production.

Toroidal field coil winding furnace

33

Toroidal field coil windings are heat treated at 650 ºC for 100 hours to allow tin in the conductor to react with niobium. Its commissioning already completed, thefurnace will heat treat 35 toroidal field coil windings at Mitsubishi Heavy Industry’s Futami factory.

Toroidal field coil winding transfer system

34

A continuous length of cable (one conductor length) is wound into a D-shaped double spiral called a“double pancake.”These double pancakes are then heat
treated, electrically insulated, and finally inserted into grooves of a radial plate. This transfer system has been commissioned and was qualified by successfullytransferring a dummy double pancake at Mitsubishi Heavy Industry’s Futami factory.

From billets to strands

35

The superconducting strands in the ITER central solenoid and toroidal field coils are made of niobium-tin alloy. At JASTEC’s Moji factory, workers prepare 40- to 100kg “billets” that will eventually be transformed into millimetre-thin strands.

High power laser to measure
one hundred degree of electron temperature

36

Prototype Nd:YAG laser system for the edge Thomson scattering system in ITER. These bright lights you can see in this photo are light of flash lamps from four
laser amplifiers. Flashlight is used for amplification of laser light in the laser amplifier. A high power laser light, on the other hand, is invisible because the light is
the infrared ray. The output laser energy is 7.66 J/pulse at 100 Hz of repetition rate.

Full-scale prototype Plasma Facing Units
for High Heat Flux testing37

JA's ITER divertor outer vertical target (OVT) prototype has been high heat flux tested in an electron beam test facility in Efremov Institute in Russia. This OVT
prototype has endured cyclic heat flux up to 20 MW/m2 for 1000 thermal cycles, and successfully been qualified.

Blanket Remote Handling System R&D

38

Verification tests for blanket cooling pipe tools, such as welding/cutting/inspection, have been continuously performed in order to crafty fabrication specifications
regarding interface structures of blanket by 1/1 mock-up vehicle manipulator for ITER in vessel maintenance.

Blanket Remote Handling System R&D

39

Verification tests for blanket cooling pipe tools, such as welding/cutting/inspection, have been continuously performed in order to crafty fabrication specifications
regarding interface structures of blanket by 1/1 mock-up vehicle manipulator for ITER in vessel maintenance.

Assembling of one stage insulator of HV bushingin Neutral beam injection system

40

The fiber-reinforced plastic(FRP) tube is combined to the ceramic ring. For the HV bushing, this ceramic with 1.56 m in diameter, which is the largest ceramic ringin the world, has been newly developed. Insulator rings (ceramic ring and FRP ring) for HV bushing were assembled for the voltage holding test in JAEA.

The testing power supply for voltage holding test of the 1MV
ultra-high voltage power supply components for NBTF

41

The capability of this is DC1.3 MV, 10 mA in continuous operation. This is used for the voltage holding test of each power supply component in the factory, andthen, for the high voltage test of the integrated power supply components in the NBTF site.

High voltage generator of the testing power supply

42

Right-hand side: The cockcroft-Walton electrical circuit to generate 1.3 MV. This is installed in the pressurized tank of the testing power supply.
Left-hand side: Invertor to deliver the primary power to the cockcroft-Walton electrical circuit.

Vacuum vessel manufacturing underway

43

Manufacturing of the ITER vacuum vessel sectors is underway in Korea, which is responsible for procuring two sectors out of nine. Pictured is the upper segmentof Sector #6, made of special ITER-grade steel, at Hyundai Heavy Industries in Ulsan, South Korea.

Prototype thermal shield under fabrication

44

Inserted between the toroidal field magnets and the vacuum vessel, the ITER thermal shield system minimizes the thermal radiation to the superconducting
magnets. In Korea, prototype fabrication has begun at SFA Engineering Corp.

Designing specialized assembly tooling45

Korea is responsible for procuring 128 different types of purpose-built tools for the assembly of the ITER Tokamak. Pictured is a four-metre-high sector assembly
tool mockup (one-fifth of the actual size) that will be used to handle the vacuum vessel sectors.

A strand manufacturing facility

46

The Chepetsky Mechanical Plant (Glazov, Udmurtia) provides Russian conductor manufacturers with superconducting strands for the cabling, jacketing andspooling of toroidal field and poloidal field conductors.

High heat flux testing of divertor targets

47

Located at the very bottom of the vacuum vessel, the ITER divertor will withstand a heat load comparable to that at the surface of the Sun. Pictured: The high heat
flux testing of a divertor target prototype at the Efremov Institute in Saint Petersburg.

Testing the port plugs

48

In early April, Cryogenmash (near Moscow, Russia) starts a series of gasket tests for the ITER Port Plug Test Facility, where port plugs – the large, leak-tight stainlesssteel plugs that seal the vacuum vessel’s openings and that weigh up to 50 tons – will be submitted to vacuum, heat and functional testing prior to their installationin the machine.

Tie plate for the central solenoid49

The 1,000-ton, 13 metre-tall, 4-metre-wide central solenoid will form the backbone of the ITER Tokamak. This one-piece tie plate prototype for the central
solenoid structure was forged by Kind, LLC in Gummersbach, Germany and then machined by G&G Steel, Inc. in Russellville, Alabama, USA.

Drain tanks for the cooling water system

50

In Camden, New Jersey, the Joseph Oat Corporation has begun fabrication activities on four 10-metre-tall, 78 metric ton drain tanks and one 5-metre-tall, 46 metricton drain tank for ITER’s cooling water system.

Fuelling the machine through pellet injection

51

Heated to temperatures of up to 150 million °C, the plasma will be fed frozen pellets of fuel, fired into the vacuum vessel by pellet injectors. Here, a pellet injector
developed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory is installed on the DIII-D tokamak (San Diego, California) for testing. Photo: US ITER

Delivering components to the ITER site

52

The ITER components will travel by sea to the Mediterranean coast of France. Upon arrival, they will be loaded onto a 352-wheel trailer that will travel along a 104-km
dedicated itinerary to the ITER site. The transport of a dummy load made of concrete blocks (600 tons), that mimicks the most exceptional dimensions of the ITER loads(10 metres tall, 33 metres long, 9 metres wide), is first tested during the nights of 16-20 September 2013.

Second test convoy takes to the sea

53

Loaded on a specially designed barge, the trailer carrying the 600-ton dummy load is ferried from the Fos-sur-Mer harbour near Marseille to the northern shoreof Étang de Berre where the dedicated ITER Itinerary begins. The operation was part of the second test convoy operation organized on 1-8 April 2014.

An early arrival

54

In the early hours of Friday 8 April 2014, the second ITER Itinerary test convoy arrives successfully on site. This second week-long test, including the crossing of aninland sea by barge, is the last dry run before the transport of ITER components begins in earnest later this year.

Photo credits

Cover ITER Organization, LESENECHAL/PPV-AIX.COM, ITER Korea
Pages 04, 07 to 21, 43, 52 to 54 ITER Organization
Pages 05, 06 LESENECHAL/PPV-AIX.COM
Pages 22, 23 ITER China
Page 24 Walter Tosto
Page 25 Fusion for Energy
Page 26 Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics
Pages 27 to 29 ITER India
Page 30, 31, 36 to 42 JAEA - ITER Japan
Page 32 to 34 Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd.
Page 35 JASTEC
Pages 44, 45 ITER Korea
Pages 46 to 48 ITER Russia
Pages 49 to 51 US ITER
Back cover ITER Organization

ITER Organization Headquarters
Route de Vinon-sur-Verdon
CS 90 046
13067 St. Paul-lez-Durance Cedex
France© ITER Organization, June 2014www.iter.org

Publications Director
Michel Claessens
michel.classens@iter.org
EditorRobert Arnoux
robert.arnoux@iter.org

Japan Atomic Energy Agency
ITER Project Integration & Support Gr.
Yuzuru Neyatani, Group Leader
Takashi Inoue, Deputy Group Leader
Setsuko Moriyama, Publicist
jada-iterkoubo@jaea.go.jp