This week, representatives from the ITER Organization and the six Domestic Agencies engaged in the production of ITER's magnets gathered together at the ITER Headquarters in Cadarache to assess the status of the magnet conductor production.

The conductors are a core component of the magnets and one of the longest lead-time items for the ITER project.  As summarized by Arnaud Devred, ITER's Superconducting Systems Section Leader, the production of strands for both the Toroidal and the Poloidal Field magnets made out of Nb3Sn and NbTi, respectively, is ongoing in all six Domestic Agencies. "As of today, 40 percent of strands required for the Toroidal Field magnets have been produced, which equals 165 tons of superconducting wire. All Domestic Agencies have successfully qualified their domestic suppliers and started to register the manufactured strands into the Conductor Database."

The panel this week also reviewed the latest test results of a conductor sample for the Central Solenoid (CS) which recently showed some unexpected behaviour. Required to withstand 60,000 current pulses during plasma operation, the conductor test performed in November 2010 at the SULTAN facility in Switzerland revealed unacceptable degradation after only 6,000 pulses.

In order to assess and solve the problem, experts assembled at the Château de Cadarache this week agreed on a multiple-step approach: a series of tests will be performed over the next weeks and months aiming to find out whether the unsatisfactory performance is a result of the sample configuration, the sample preparation, or the conductor design itself. "These tests will be performed in parallel in order to save time and to enable the start of procurement," says Devred. "The SULTAN test serves as a risk mitigation strategy for launching production, but the true validation of the performance in conditions similar to the operating environment will be made by a long length of conductor."  This so-called CS Insert test will occur during the second half of 2013, when 50 metres of CS conductor will be tested in the CS Model Coil based in Naka, Japan that provides test conditions very similar to those in ITER.