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Panjawani Rajkumar, the vice president of cryogenic system specialist INOX CVA, came all the way to Toulon, France from Vadodara in the Indian state of Gujarat. His company is in the process of bidding for an ITER contract and what he was looking for last week, at the ITER Business Forum, was a partner company, or companies, to complement his tender offer.
If INOX CVA wins the contract it will need to team up with a company that will install its workshop on, or close to, the ITER platform. It will also need a partner to enforce quality control and on-site safety. "If we get the contract, we will be working under French regulation. Rather than training Indian personnel, it is more efficient to have a partnership with a French company that is familiar with national practices and regulation."
Panjawani Rajkumar was one of 718 participants (from 386 companies, universities or research institutions) from 24 countries that attended the third ITER Business Forum held on 21-22 March in the Mediterranean port of Toulon.
As in Nice in 2007 and in Manosque two and a half years ago, the ITER Business Forum (IBF) in Toulon aimed at providing international industry with updated information on the status of ITER, the procurement process, and the calls for tender planned for the coming years.
The third edition of IBF was organized by the Industrial Liaison Officers Network of the European Domestic Agency for ITER (Fusion for Energy), the Toulon Tourist Office, and the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Var département, with participation and support from the ITER Organization, Fusion for Energy, the ITER Domestic Agencies and Agence Iter France. Secretary-General of the French ITER Industrial Committee Sabine Portier and Agence Iter France personnel largely contributed to the success of the event.
For anyone interested in doing business with ITER, IBF was definitely the place to be. In his welcoming address, ITER Director-General Osamu Motojima summarized what could be expected from the two-day meeting: "You will have opportunities, both formal and informal, to meet with representatives of the ITER Organization, Fusion for Energy and other institutions involved in ITER," he told participants.
"These representatives will provide you with a better understanding of our project, of the machine we are building and of the procedures we are implementing. This meeting will also be an opportunity, for you, to develop collaborations, combine skills and create synergies that will benefit us all."
Fusion for Energy Director Henrik Bindslev, who also addressed the IBF participants, stressed the importance for Europe to "increase competences and capacities [...] in fusion and outside fusion. We want you to find opportunities in fusion and in ITER. That is what this Forum is about."
And that is exactly what the IBF participants did. As Panjawani Rajkumar met with representatives of French companies, Pierre Jamotton, an engineer with Belgium's Centre Spatial de Liège—one of the world-leading institutes for space technology research and testing—was connecting with potential partners in the field of cryogenics, surface treatment and optics.
"You can draw several parallels between the conditions in space and the conditions in the ITER machine," says Jamotton. "We have a long experience in space and we made a first incursion into fusion recently by providing equipment to test the JT-60SA superconducting magnets. Of course we would like to have contracts with ITER and add our little stone to the project edifice, and this is the place to get the information and find the partners."
Like Rajkumar and Jamotton, the 718 participants in IBF left Toulon with dozens of contacts and several prospective partnerships. They brought home a better understanding of what ITER is about and a clearer perspective of the project's economic weight. The local daily Var Matin summed it up in its Friday morning headline: "ITER: a four-billion-euro market for industry."
http://www.iter.org/newsline/262/1540-Robert Arnoux
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Take in the view and enjoy it while you can. In a couple months, the spectacular pattern formed by the 493 columns in the Tokamak Complex Seismic Pit — the emblematic image of ITER construction — will have vanished from view.
The lone scaffolding that was erected two weeks ago at the centre of the pit has already been joined by dozens of others. "Everything will be covered," says ITER Nuclear Buildings Section Leader Laurent Patisson. Once the structures are in place, a steel rebar skeleton will be installed on top of them and pouring of the 1.5 metre-thick B2 slab will begin plot by plot (or "pour by pour") —a process which should take about nine months.
"The propping and formwork structures will support the weight of the rebar and concrete until the hardening of the concrete makes it possible to transfer the effort onto the seismic pads," adds Laurent. "A total of 15,000 m3 of concrete will be poured, which—added to the weight of the rebar (~ 4,000 tons)—will amount to a load of some 37,500 tons."
Creating a reinforced slab over formwork structures that are supported by braced scaffoldings is a common technique. The very same process was implemented, two years ago, on the nuclear research reactor Jules-Horowitz (RJH) that is being constructed at CEA-Cadarache.
Every installation has its own geometry, however, which is reflected in the complex pattern of the steel reinforcement bars. "We have to demonstrate constructability prior to pouring the actual slab," explains Laurent. "We also have to qualify the concrete and test the efficiency of the vibration techniques."
To that effect, a 150 m2 mockup has been created on the platform to the west of the Seismic Pit. "Although 3D models of the rebar arrangements have been produced, we need a hands-on experience of the difficulties we may encounter." Four different areas of rebar, presenting specific challenges (density, complexity), will be reproduced at 1:1 scale in the mockup. Work on the mockup began last week.
The mockup will also allow the practice installation and testing of the anchor plates that will be embedded into the concrete. These thick steel plates of various sizes, all dotted with long spikes (see picture), will reach deep into the concrete.
Once embedded into the concrete mass, the plates form an exceptionally solid base onto which equipment such as magnet feeders, drain tanks or cubicles can be welded. The Tokamak Complex will contain some 60,000 such plates.
"What is at stake beyond the B2 slab," summarizes Laurent, "is the robustness of the whole Tokamak support, from the cryostat bearing down to the ground."
Work progressed steadily last week on propping operations inside the Tokamak Pit and on its smaller mockup sibling nearby.
http://www.iter.org/newsline/262/1536-R.A.
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In pre-ITER times, the world production of niobium-tin (Nb3Sn) strands did not exceed 15 tons per year. Discovered in 1954, this intermetallic compound that exhibits a critical temperature of ~18 K and is able to withstand intense magnetic fields was used mainly in high field coils and nuclear magnetic resonance equipment.
To match the needs of ITER's 19 toroidal field coils (18 plus one spare), the world production capacity of Nb3Sn strand had to be ramped up by one order of magnitude. As of today, 400 tons of Nb3Sn have been produced by the industry of the six ITER Domestic Agencies involved in conductor procurement, representing 85 percent of toroidal field coil needs.
Nb3Sn conductors will also form the core of the central solenoid, the backbone of the ITER magnet system. Strand production has been launched in Japan for the lower module (CS3L) and conductor lengths will be shipped at a later time to the US where the central solenoid will be manufactured.
For ITER's third major magnet system—the poloidal field coils—because the magnetic field they produce is less intense, they can be manufactured from the metallic alloy niobium-titanium (NbTi), which is cheaper and easier to produce than the brittle Nb3Sn.
The Russian-European collaboration that procures NbTi strands for ITER has already produced 80 tons of Strand 1, destined for poloidal field 1 and 6. China, responsible for the procurement of conductors for poloidal field coils 2 to 5, has registered nearly 50 tons of of NbTi Strand 2 into the Conductor Database (this essential tool monitors the strand, cable, jacket and conductor production of each Domestic Agency). China will send its first poloidal field conductor shipment to the ITER site within the next two months.
Altogether, conductors for the magnet systems account for 13 percent of the total ITER project credits.
| | An ITER success story
Niobium-tin (Nb3Sn) strand production is a good example of an ITER success story that began five years ago with the signature of the very first Procurement Arrangements. Production was successfully ramped up worldwide. The main difficulty was to get the six procuring Domestic Agencies and their suppliers to adopt and implement a common quality assurance/quality control program that ensured uniformity and stability of production among the eight suppliers and over the duration of production. The web-based Conductor Database developed by the ITER Organization was instrumental in enabling all partners to monitor on-going production. Five years down the line, all suppliers have been able to meet the demanding ITER Organization requirements and achieve production goals. This is likely to result in spin-offs—and possibly new potential markets—as it has, for the very first time, been demonstrated that Nb3Sn can be mass produced and meet tight tolerances. Also thanks to ITER, three new companies that were set up by their respective governments for the purpose of fulfilling ITER obligations are now ready to enter the commercial market.
Arnaud Devred | | |
These figures and other information relating to correction coils, feeder conductors, manufacturing issues, quality control, test results and technical issues were presented and discussed at last week's meeting on conductor production status at the Château de Cadarache.
The Conductor Meeting, which has been held twice a year since 2008 (at ITER in the spring and in one of the "Conductor Domestic Agencies" in the fall), gathers representatives of the ITER Organization, the Domestic Agencies and their suppliers.
"It is an opportunity to share and benefit from each other's experience," says ITER Superconductor Systems and Auxiliaries Section Leader Arnaud Devred who traditionally chairs the meeting. "As all conductors are now in the production phase, the feeling in our community is definitely optimistic. Everything is moving ahead and the collaborative spirit, not only between the ITER Organization and the Domestic Agencies but between the Domestic Agencies themselves, is truly excellent."
http://www.iter.org/newsline/262/1541
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For the second time in its history, the ITER Council Management Advisory Committee (MAC) convened for an extraordinary session in order to assess the status of the ITER project schedule and the implementation of corrective actions.
The meeting took place from 18-19 March at the headquarters of the European Domestic Agency in Barcelona in the attendance of high-level representatives of the ITER Organization and seven ITER Members.
Since the last special MAC meeting held in August 2012, the ITER Organization has worked closely with Domestic Agencies to complete the integration of Detailed Work Schedules (DWS)—detailed schedules that exist for every component or system. The IO and DAs completed the integration of the remaining DWS, namely main vacuum vessel, ion cyclotron antenna, poloidal field coils and toroidal field structure, which will allow for monitoring of the schedule.
MAC requested that the Unique ITER Team continue to make significant efforts to take action focusing on super-critical milestones and to take all possible measures to keep to the Baseline schedule. The ITER Organization and Domestic Agencies are committed to doing their best to implement this request.
http://www.iter.org/newsline/262/1544
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Scientists at the US Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) and the National Institute for Fusion Science (NIFS) in Japan have developed a rapid method for meeting a key challenge for fusion science. The challenge has been to simulate the diagnostic measurement of plasmas produced by twisting, or 3D, magnetic fields in fusion facilities. While such fields characterize facilities called stellarators, otherwise symmetric, or 2D, facilities such as tokamaks also can benefit from 3D fields.
Researchers led by PPPL physicist Sam Lazerson have now created a computer code that simulates the required diagnostics, and have validated the code on the Large Helical Device stellarator in Japan. Called "Diagno v2.0," the new program utilizes information from previous codes that simulate 3D plasmas without the diagnostic measurements. The addition of this new capability could, with further refinement, enable physicists to predict the outcome of 3D plasma experiments with a high degree of accuracy.
http://www.iter.org/newsline/262/1543
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