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Assembly Building  Above, the main hoists of the Assembly Building, capable of handling loads of up to 1,500 tons. Below, some of the specialized tooling required to assemble, lift and finally manoeuver ITER's supersized components. Here, for example, each of the nine steel sectors of the ITER vacuum vessel will be sub-assembled with thermal shielding and two toroidal field coils before being lifted and positioned inside the machine. Work began in June 2012 on the groundwork for the Assembly Building. First, 10,000 m³ of soil and rock was removed from an area measuring 60 x 100 metres. The following month, a thin layer of blinding concrete was laid. Work then began on steel reinforcement for the building's basemat. From the outset, space has been reserved for the numerous openings that the concrete basemat will have to accommodate for electrical galleries, drainage, piping and tunnels servicing the neighbouring Tokamak Complex. The result is a particularly complex grid of steel rebar. Concrete pouring activities were carried out from November 2012 to May 2013. The basemat ranges in thickness from 1.2‒2.2 metres. In certain areas, the anchor plates for Assembly Building tooling have been embedded in the concrete. Construction of the steel-structured Assembly Building will begin in early 2014 as part of the construction contract for the Tokamak Complex, which was signed in December 2012. Click here to view recent videos of construction progress on the ITER site.
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