Assessing the damage in Naka
1 Jul 2011
Hiromasa Ninomiya (1st from right), director general for fusion at Japan's Atomic Energy Agency; Deputy Director General Kenkishi Ushigusa (front centre), and sub-group leader Norikiyo Koizumi (1st from left) gave ITER Director-General Motojima and ITER Council Secretary Sachiko Ishizaka a tour of the damaged buildings at Naka.
What the Japanese call "the Great East-Japan Earthquake" has caused significant damage to the JAEA Naka Fusion Research Institute, located some 300 kilometres south of the catastrophe's epicentre.
Buildings hosting ITER-related activities—notably the Superconducting Coil Test Facility Building, the Gyrotron Test Facility and the MeV-Class Ion Source Test Facility—were badly shaken. As the exact scale of damage is still being fully assessed, entrance to several buildings remains prohibited for safety reasons.
Last Tuesday, 21 June, one week after the ITER Council, Director-General Osamu Motojima paid a visit to Naka in order to see for himself the extent of the damage and discuss the recovery plan with Dr. Hiromasa Ninomiya, director general for fusion at Japan's Atomic Energy Agency.
Mitigating the consequences of the Japanese situation on the ITER schedule was a key issue in the discussion.