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Assembly Overview

The ITER Organization has overall responsibility for the successful integration and assembly of components delivered to the ITER site by the seven ITER Members. This includes the assembly of the ITER Tokamak, with its estimated one million components, and the parallel installation and integration of plant systems such as radio frequency heating, fuel cycle, cryogenic, cooling water, vacuum, control, and high voltage electrical.

Hundreds of thousands of assembly tasks, organized into construction work packages, have been carefully planned and organized by ITER engineers and schedulers. In its role as overall assembly integrator, the ITER Organization is assisted by:

1 - A Construction Management-as-Agent (CMA), whose role is to plan, manage, and supervise the works of the assembly phase including contract preparation, daily contract management, execution supervision, and site coordination. The MOMENTUM Consortium—formed by Jacobs (UK), Assystem (France) and KEPCO E&C (Korea)—was selected as the ITER Organization CMA contractor in 2016.

2 - Assembly contractors working under one of the nine major assembly and installation contracts awarded by the ITER Organization. Construction work packages will be released by the ITER Organization to contractors in achievable—and trackable—batches. From these construction work packages, the assembly contractors will generate the installation work packages that define each execution task in detail.

3 - Assembly contractors working under the Domestic Agencies. In a limited number of cases—for example the welding of the cryostat sections in the Tokamak pit by Indian Domestic Agency contractors, or the installation of remote handling equipment—the procurement scope of a component or system includes on-site installation work managed by the Domestic Agencies.

The construction platform has been divided into three distinct assembly zones: Worksite 1 (Tokamak Pit, Assembly Hall and Cleaning Building) focused on the assembly of the ITER Tokamak; Worksite 2, focused on the Tokamak Complex plant systems directly connected to the machine; and Worksites 3-6 for balance of plant activities (all plant and auxiliary buildings). 

2020
start
machine assembly
2024
cryostat
closure
2025
First
Plasma
2026
full
magnet power
* 2016 Baseline schedule
This is the principal assembly phase of ITER, designed to prepare the machine for the Start of Research Operation. In addition to assembling the core machine, which ends with the closure of the cryostat, systems such as the divertor, fuelling, heating, disruption mitigation and a first set of diagnostics will be installed.

During this phase, the superconducting coils are operated at nominal current levels and ramp rates, high quality vacuum is demonstrated and leak tests are run, and the systems needed for Start of Research Operations are commissioned.

Integrated Commissioning I

Assembly phase II

By the end of the assembly phase that will follow Start of Research Operations, the ITER machine will have a fully cooled tungsten first wall and divertor, a full array of heating systems and a near-complete set of diagnostics, all in-vessel coils for stability and ELM control, and a first set of tritium test breeding modules.

The second integrated commissioning phase will prepare the ITER machine for Deuterium-Tritium Operation. Systems to be commissioned include neutral beam injection, tritium plant systems, test blanket systems, and the control/safety/interlock systems required for fusion operation.

Integrated Commissioning II