DECEMBER: Beginning 2013, all eyes will be turned toward the largest building project of the ITER site: the civil works of the 360,000-ton Tokamak Complex comprising the Tokamak, Diagnostic and Tritium buildings.
NOVEMBER: The decree authorizing the ITER Organization to create the ITER Installation Nucléaire de base (INB) in Saint-Paul-lez-Durance is published in the Journal Official de la République Française on 10 November 2012, bringing to a close more than 30 months of procedure and clearing the way for the pursuit of ITER construction.
OCTOBER: "Wow!" pronounced with many different accents was the expression of the day on Monday 8 October 2012, as 114 staff and contractors moved into their new offices in the ITER Headquarters building. "Wow" because of the view—spectacular in all directions; "Wow" because of the offices, clear and wide; and "Wow" also for the excitement of turning an important page in the story of ITER, now completely at home in a building designed by one of France's most brilliant architects.
SEPTEMBER: In order to cooperate even more closely for the implementation of ITER, an integrated project management approach is proposed by the ITER Organization. The Unique ITER Team aims to enhance collaboration between the ITER Organization and the Domestic Agencies. In this picture, the ITER Domestic Agencies symbolically join hands with the ITER Organization.
AUGUST: Seventeen metres below the surface of the platform, the concrete basemat, retaining walls, and 493 seismic pads are in place to protect the buildings and the equipment from ground motion in the case of a earthquake. The contract for the civil works of the Tokamak Complex is scheduled for signature in 2012. Contractors will then begin on the formwork and reinforcement for the Complex basemat.
JULY: A branch of the 1.6 kilometres of piping that crisscross the ITER platform has been designed to evacuate the overflow of a "centennial rain"—extremely heavy rainfall that, statistically, occurs only once every century but that can lead to water flow estimated at 17.8 m3 per second. Based on this estimate, a safety margin of approximately 20 percent has been applied to the calculation of ITER's underground rainwater network.
JUNE: Located adjacent to the Tokamak Seismic Pit, the Assembly Building area is the site of the latest construction campaign on the platform. This 60 m x 100 m rectangle of earth will host the 57-metre-high edifice in which ITER components will be assembled prior to their installation in the Tokamak. The building will rest on a robust concrete basemat that will have to integrate the complex topography of the underlying galleries for drainage, electricity and piping.
MAY: In terms of instantaneous electricity consumption, tokamaks are gluttonous beasts. ITER will require up to 400 MW of power for every plasma shot. In order to feed the machine, a four-hectare switchyard was built in the southern corner of the ITER platform. Early in May, the switchyard was equipped with an "earthmat" consisting of a network of rods and copper cables buried some 50 cm underground—the equivalent of earthing your home appliance. The ITER switchyard went live on 27 June 2012, one year after works began.
APRIL: On Wednesday, 18 April 2012, ITER Director-General Osamu Motojima and Laurent Schmieder, head of the Site, Buildings and Power Supplies Division for the European Domestic Agency F4E, pressed the switch that finalized the installation of the 493rd and final seismic pad in the Tokamak Pit. Although all the ITER seismic pads are identical, number 493 has special symbolic value: it stands precisely at the centre of the star-like formation of plinths that will directly bear the weight of the Tokamak.
MARCH: Fifteen-metre-high retaining walls complete the ground support structure for the Tokamak Complex: the retaining walls maintain and stabilize the surrounding rock and "waterproof" the Seismic Pit.
FEBRUARY: Dwarfed by the giant circular spreader beam suspended over their heads, the participants in the handover ceremony of the Poloidal Field Coils Winding Facility looked something like passengers in a spaceport waiting to board a ship bound for a distant planet. The Winding Facility, where ITER's large poloidal field coils will be assembled starting 2014, was transferred from the French construction consortium Spie Batignolles, Omega Concept and Setec to the European Domestic Agency, Fusion for Energy on 14 February 2012.
JANUARY: Since August 2011, some 18,000 m3 of concrete have been set into place over a dense array of steel rebar and stirrups—some 3,400 tons of metal for a 1.5 metre-thick foundation slab. In order to ensure the close-to-perfect homogeneity of the basemat, each slab was poured in one continuous operation lasting no more than an extended workday. The basemat (11,500 m2) was separated into 21 sections, filled successively with 800 m3 of concrete.
January 2012
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