There is no traditional ceremony attached to the completion of the foundations for a future home as there is one, called a Topping Out, to celebrate the laying of a roof. Had there been one, ITER, F4E and their contractor GTM could have raised a glass to an important milestone in the project's schedule: the pouring, on 22 December, of the twenty-first and last concrete slab of the Seismic Pit basemat. Work on this 1.5-metre-thick structure began before dawn on a warm August day six months ago. Since then, some 18,000 m³ of concrete have been poured over a dense array of steel rebar and stirrups—some 3,400 tonnes of metal in all. In order to insure close-to-perfect homogeneity of the basemat, each slab had to be poured in one continuous operation lasting no more than an extended workday. Considering that the pumps could deliver an average of 100 m³ of concrete per hour, the 11,500 m² surface of basemat was broken down into 21 sections, each to be filled successively with 800 m³ of concrete. This slab-by-slab technique also reduced the forces exerted by concrete "shrinkage" on the steel rebar. The Seismic Pit basemat was designed to be extremely strong. It supports the anti-seismic pillars and bearings upon which the Tokamak Complex basemat will rest, and will ultimately bear the 360,000 tonnes of the Tokamak Complex. A central area of the basemat—approximately 80 m²—was reinforced to bear the weight of the mammoth central column assembly tool that will operate during the machine assembly phase on the Tokamak Complex basemat. This extra strength was achieved through an increased density of stirrups. Upon the now-finalized basemat, 159 seismic bearings (out of a total of 493) remain to be installed over the next two months. Twenty percent of the retaining walls have been completed and two parallel operations will commence this spring: a much smaller (5,500 m²) and relatively shallow excavation for the Assembly Building basemat and, prior to rebar reinforcement, horizontal wooden formwork and scaffolding for the next basemat that will be poured: the Tokamak Complex basemat.
His desk is empty: no documents cover its surface, just a computer. The office has the ambiance of an apartment where the former resident just moved out and the boxes with the personal belongings of the next have not yet arrived. The only visible sign that there's a new occupant in Office 138, Building 519 is the large picture towering over the meeting table—a pictogram, to be precise—made up of many hundreds of small photos. It shows Peter the Great, which comes as no surprise as Alexander Alekseev is from Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is mid-December 2011 and Alexander Alekseev, the newly appointed head of the ITER Tokamak Directorate, is settling into his new job—"the biggest challenge of my life," he bluntly states. Although dealing with administrative issues and trying to find his way around this big international enterprise called ITER has occupied his first weeks here, he knows that time allowed for adjustment is short. "The ITER train is rolling with high speed and I have to jump onto it." Alexander is by no means a newcomer to the ITER world. In fact he has dedicated all of his professional life to the project, approaching it from many different angles. He first encountered fusion in 1986 when his professor at the Leningrad Technical Institute proposed a thesis topic on the thermal-mechanical analysis of superconductors under quench conditions. For this, Alexander went to work at the Efremov Institute (he would later return, making contributions to engineering aspects of various fusion devices such as T-15, Globus-M, KTM, KSTAR, W7-X and T-15MD). "These were difficult times due to Perestroika," Alexander remembers. "Money was scarce and it was hard to defend our research budget. I guess the only reason we survived is because of the Russian involvement in the ITER Project." Alexander knows the ITER machine from inside out, as he and his team at the Efremov Institute have made valuable contributions to the design and analysis of the magnet structure and the thermal shielding. They were also engaged in the thermo-hydraulic analysis of the ITER magnet system during the machine's cool-down and operational phase; the analysis of its cryolines and power supply systems; and the effect of increased stress loads on the poloidal and toroidal field coils due to exceptional current events. Thus there are not many screws and bolts on the ITER machine that Alexander isn't familiar with. But still, running one of the biggest and certainly one of the key directorates within the ITER Organization remains a huge challenge. Talking about how he plans to tackle this task he uses terms like "adjustment" and "adaptation" rather that bold expressions such as "revolution." "We Russians," he says, smiling jovially, "we have some experience with revolutions. They usually result in a long period of recovery ..." As an engineer, Alexander wants to focus on the "real-life aspects" of building the ITER machine, for example "improving the hand-over to industry." And he will have to draw a line for design activities. "We have to stop optimizing or ITER will never be built." In his free time Alexander loves to play badminton and to ski. Driving to work from Aix-en-Provence in the morning and seeing the fresh snow on the mountains on the horizon fills him with anticipation. The vocabulary to describe all that he sees in French, he hopes, will be part of a later chapter, as he is eager to learn. "Language is part of a country's culture and I am curious to explore. If I find the time..."
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When she worked as a lawyer in the Financial Division of CERN in the mid-1980s, Aires Soares liked to spend time close to the machine. "It was like having a conversation," she says, "and what I was learning was just fascinating." The Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) was a relatively small installation compared to the present Large Hadron Collider (LHC). But it was one of the most advanced of the time and chatting with it about its ventures into the realm of subatomic particles must have made for very interesting "conversation" indeed. Preparing contractual clauses or reporting to CERN's Financial Committee could appear quite far removed from the unveiling of matter's most intimate secrets ... Aires says it was not. "There was a real community feeling at CERN and everyone, physicist or not, was definitely part of it." For many years, Aires Soares missed the conversations she had with the CERN machine. At ITER, which she joined on 1 November 2011 as head of the Finance and Budget Division, she's confident that the conversions will resume and that the ITER Tokamak, once built and operating, will provide the same opportunities and rewards. Just as the Large Electron-Positron collider (LEP) was entering operation at CERN in 1989, Aires left for the European Commission's Directorate-General for Research. She headed the Administration and Finances Division for 14 years, before moving on to more policy-oriented positions where she contributed to developing research policy, defining a strategic plan for energy in Europe, and promoting cooperation in energy with countries like Japan, US and China—what she calls "building bridges." One of the major "bridges" Aires contributed to was the US-EU Energy Council formed in 2009—an institution playing a "vital role [...] in fostering cooperation on energy security, renewables and other clean energy technologies," according to a recent White House statement. In 2010, after having headed a unit called "Horizontal aspects and coordination in Nuclear Energy," Aires was assigned to the EU delegation in Washington, DC where, as minister-counsellor, she continued to "build bridges"—this time from the other side of the Atlantic. Whatever jobs she has held over the past twenty-five years since her PhD in law from the University of Montpellier, France, Aires' relationship to science always went far beyond her job's requirements. She is convinced that "you can't be just a lawyer, an accountant or an administrator. If you want to do your job properly and enjoy doing it, you need an understanding of the broader picture." Aires liked the flexibility and efficiency of the American system and she enjoyed "meeting and working with research policy people from embassies, universities, industry, think tanks, and US administration and congress," ... but still, she longed for a machine to talk to. When she learned that a position had opened at the ITER Organization for a new head of the Finance and Budget Division, she felt she would be on familiar ground in Cadarache. Compared to CERN, ITER is young. "Its culture," she says, "is still in the making, which makes things even more exciting and challenging." An important aspect of her new job will be to make sure that all are committed to "taking the best care of the ITER budget" and to provide assurance to the ITER Members that their money is "soundly managed and spent efficiently". She's begun by "clarifying the mission of the division." And soon, she'll have another Big Machine to talk to...
Activity on the ITER platform is already impressive: over the past year and a half—with no more than 300 workers on the site at any given time—the Tokamak Seismic Pit was created, the 257-metre long Poloidal Field Coils Building and ITER Headquarters erected, and most of the work on the four-hectare switchyard that will deliver power to the installation completed. Now imagine how busy the place will become when construction of the Tokamak Complex, Assembly Hall and the other buildings begins. Imagine, also, the workforce required to assemble the machine ... As early as the end of 2012, the number of workers on site will begin to rise, and it is projected that the 1,000 mark will be passed in late 2013. The plateau of 3,000-3,500 workers will be reached one year later. From then on, and for at least three years, the ITER platform will be extremely busy. This is good news for ITER, and good news also for the region's economy. But how will the immediate region cope with such a large influx of population? Where will these workers—among whom 40 to 60 percent will come either from other French regions or from abroad—find a proper lodging? Answering these questions is part of Agence Iter France's (AIF) mission. In cooperation with the European Domestic Agency Fusion For Energy, which is responsible for the construction of the ITER buildings, and in consultation with the ITER Organization, the French agency's Welcome Office is presently mapping out the local real estate market in order to assess its capacity to absorb the building contractors' demands. Halfway into this assessment, to which AIF has associated a specialized consultancy firm and three relocation agencies, a mixed picture is emerging. "What is clear," says Emmanuelle Bellange, head of AIF's Welcome Office, "is that the current availability of housing within 30 minutes of ITER does not meet the demand that is anticipated. And rental prices are particularly high in this part of France..." Solutions exist. But they have to be worked out with the local players. AIF has identified 41 towns and villages, most of them situated along the A51 thruway, that would be suitable for hosting ITER workers. AIF Director Jérôme Pamela, accompanied by Emmanuelle Bellange, has already met with the mayors of 31 of these 41 communities, explaining the challenges but also the potential benefits for local economies. "Their reaction has been very positive," says Bellange. "The mayors are eager to welcome this new population and have ideas on how to do it. Some towns have real estate, like disaffected retirement homes or workers' hostels that—once renovated—could perfectly meet the contractors' needs; others have land that could host a base camp equipped with bungalows or mobile homes... The options are numerous." A building contractor can, for instance, renovate a building, use it free of charge for the duration of its contract, and then retrocede it to the community. A mayor can trade the free use of a piece of municipal land for a base camp against the construction of a public soccer field. "It has to be a win-win operation," stresses Bellange. "What everyone involved wants to avoid is the development of makeshift living areas, rent inflation and indecent living conditions for companies' employees." There's even more at stake, however: the way the local inhabitants perceive the ITER Project as a whole will, in part, be linked to the impact of the workers' presence on their environment.
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