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News & Media

Latest ITER Newsline

  • ITER Design Handbook | Preserving the vital legacy of ITER

    The contributions that ITER is making to fusion physics and engineering—through decades of decisions and implementation—are delivering insights to the fusion co [...]

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  • Electron cyclotron heating | Aligning technology and physics

    ITER, like other fusion devices, will rely on a mix of external heating technologies to bring the plasma to the temperature necessary for fusion. At a five-day [...]

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  • Poloidal field magnets | The last ring

    As the massive ring-shaped coil inched its way from the Poloidal Field Coils Winding Facility, where it was manufactured, to the storage facility nearby where i [...]

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  • Heat rejection | White "smoke" brings good news

    Like a plume of white smoke rising from a cardinals' conclave to announce the election of a new pope, the tenuous vapour coming from one of the ITER cooling cel [...]

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  • WEC 2024 | Energy on centre stage

    The global players in the energy sector convened in Rotterdam last week for the 26th edition of the World Energy Congress (WEC). The venue was well chosen, wit [...]

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Of Interest

See archived entries

Construction

The stage is now set for the next act

Nine years and 382 Newsline issues ago, a lone power shovel began removing the top soil from the area on the ITER platform where the Tokamak Complex now stands. Following two years of clearing and levelling work by France, construction of the ITER installation was beginning in earnest. 

This is what the 42-hectare ITER platform looked like in the early months of 2010: a vast, featureless, moon-like expanse. (Click to view larger version...)
This is what the 42-hectare ITER platform looked like in the early months of 2010: a vast, featureless, moon-like expanse.
It may be hard to believe, but this is what the 42-hectare ITER platform looked like in the early months of 2010, just before being transferred from Agence Iter France to the European Domestic Agency, responsible for construction. A vast, featureless, moon-like expanse that—being located in Provence—some described as the largest pétanque court ever created.

One by one, the now-familiar buildings and structures have sprung from the earth: nine years into construction civil works are 73 percent complete, concrete has reached its final level in the Tokamak Building, and a massive machine component—the cryostat lower cylinder—is visible, carefully encased in its protective cocoon, waiting to be installed in the Assembly Pit.

The ITER plant systems are distributed across the one-kilometre-long construction platform in Saint-Paul-lez-Durance, France. In the centre, the concrete Tokamak Complex which will house the ITER machine. The precise location of the 430,000-tonne Complex was determined by the quality of the underlying bedrock. (Click to view larger version...)
The ITER plant systems are distributed across the one-kilometre-long construction platform in Saint-Paul-lez-Durance, France. In the centre, the concrete Tokamak Complex which will house the ITER machine. The precise location of the 430,000-tonne Complex was determined by the quality of the underlying bedrock.
As conveyed by the images from this latest drone survey (June 2019), the stage is now set for the next act in the project's history: the machine assembly phase, set to begin in May 2020.




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