Six packed and stacked
In a factory not far from ITER, French equipment manufacturer CNIM (Toulon) is working under a contract with Europe's Fusion for Energy to manufacture a set of nine composite rings. These high-tech components—with exceptional tensile strength—will have an important role to play in protecting ITER's toroidal field coils.
During the estimated 30,000 pulses of the ITER machine, the ITER toroidal field coils and coil structures will be subjected to huge electromagnetic forces, on the order of several hundred meganewtons (MN). Caused by electromagnetic interaction between the toroidal field coil current and the magnetic field generated by the poloidal field coils, these out-of-plane forces will cause stress to the toroidal field coils and, over time, fatigue.