An eagerly anticipated dummy
6 Jul 2012
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Samina Shamsie, Fusion For Energy
Loading of the 760-metre copper dummy at Criotec in May for delivery to ASG.
After driving through the night, the oversize truck pulls up in the early May dawn at the ASG facilities in La Spezia, Italy. The special delivery, a wooden square box with 5-metre dimensions, contains a large spool around which the eagerly anticipated dummy of a 760-metre-long copper conductor is wound.
The dummy is a mockup of the ITER conductors. These conductors will each be used in the toroidal field coils to carry 68,000 amps of electrical current in order to produce the magnetic field which confines and holds the plasma in place. In total, 19 superconducting conductor lengths (each measuring 760 m) and 8 conductors (each measuring 415 m) will be produced.
Although the final components will consist of superconducting materials, the dummy is made only of copper strands which have been plaited together (cabled) and inserted into a jacket in order to form a round conductor with a diameter of 44 mm. Nonetheless, the dummy package weighs an impressive 13 tonnes. Because of its large dimensions, it is only transportable during certain hours of the night after other traffic has been cleared.
The ICAS and European Domestic Agency teams in front of the first toroidal field conductor production length.
The dummy was manufactured for the European Domestic Agency F4E by ICAS, an Italian consortium consisting of the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA), Criotec, and Tratos Cavi. The next steps of the process will be undertaken by ASG, part of the Iberdrola consortium (which includes Iberdrola and Elytt), F4E's toroidal field coil supplier and the company to which the dummy was delivered. The copper dummy length will be used for the commissioning of the toroidal field coil winding line.
In recent months, two additional toroidal field lengths made from superconducting strand were manufactured, thus completing the qualification phase during which both tooling and manufacturing procedures are verified. These conductor lengths are expected to be shipped to La Spezia by the end of the summer.
On May 15, the fabrication of the first production toroidal field conductor length was completed at Criotec: this length is the first conductor which will be inserted into the ITER machine. In the coming two years, 26 additional toroidal field lengths will be fabricated and supplied by ICAS.