Augmented reality goes to work for nuclear fusion

2025-03-25 - New augmented reality software has been deployed at ITER that allows plant assembly engineers and technicians to compare, with a simple tablet or smartphone, the "as-built" position of components to the 3D plans. Savings in both cost and time are expected as issues can be more easily identified.

2025-03-19 - Technetics, a company supplying vacuum seals to the ITER project, brings its production team to the ITER site on 19 March to see how its products are used. (The picture was taken during a lunch break in Gréoux-les-Bains.)

2025-03-18 - 30 operator stations in the ITER control room are now equipped with keyboards, mice and computer screens. This configuration will cover needs for the next seven to eight years.

2025-03-18 - Sector 8, on the right, is a "bare" vacuum vessel sector. Sector 7, on the left, has been ensconced in its thermal shield and associated with two vertical magnet coils (toroidal field coils) to form a "sector module assembly." This assembly will be ready for permanent placement in the tokamak pit in April—the first of nine sector module assemblies that will form the vacuum vessel and its surrounding toroidal field magnet superstructure.

2025-03-18 - After a brief stay in the tokamak pit, sector #8 has been returned to the upending tool, whose rigging has been prepared to receive its repaired side facing down. The sector will be "downended" and returned to the Cryostat Workshop for further remediation.

2025-03-17 - After crossing the inland sea of Berre (photo), the two halves of the upending tool expected at ITER were unloaded for the last leg of the journey—road transport along the 104 km of the ITER itinerary.

2025-03-17 - The IT Project Tools Section has developed an AI-based chatbot that helps users to find what they are looking for within the 1.5 million documents contained in the ITER Document Management (IDM) system. It went quickly from a proof-or-concept to a production system that has already been queried 20,000 times.

2025-03-17 - US ITER has completed delivery of all components for the support structure of the central solenoid, including tie plates (one is pictured) and key blocks. The support structure can be described as an exoskeleton, or a cage, that surrounds the central solenoid magnets to hold them in place and withstand the extreme force that the central solenoid will generate. Credit: US ITER

2025-03-16 - One half of an upending tool is brought on board a barge in France to cross the inland sea of Berre. This second upending tool, which will add capacity for the assembly of the vacuum vessel, will soon be at ITER.

2025-03-06 - Contractors to Fusion for Energy, the European Domestic Agency, have completed vacuum vessel sector #4. The 440-tonne component will leave the Walter Tosto factory in Italy this month for shipment to ITER where it will be the sixth sector received on site. ©Walter Tosto

2025-03-04 - The overhead cranes cannot "grasp" major loads directly; instead, several elements of rigging intervene between the cranes and the components to be lifted. The dual crane heavy lifting beam (in yellow) allows the cranes to work in tandem and facilitates the rotation of components. The sector lift tool (in grey, with the marking SWL 1257t) interfaces with the radial beam suspending the sector and is equipped with a system to balance the load.

2025-03-04 - This vacuum vessel sector is temporarily occupying one of the bays reserved for sector modules in the tokamak pit. Next month, though, a completed sector module assembly (a sector + vertical coils + thermal shield) will be permanently lowered into bay #7.

2025-03-04 - Two overhead cranes work together to transport the sector out of the upending tool, across the Assembly Hall, and into the tokamak pit.

2025-03-04 - On Tuesday 4 March, sector #8 of the vacuum vessel is temporarily "parked" in the tokamak pit. The handling operation that will ensue has been designed to reverse the bevel joint region that will be exposed when the component is returned to a horizontal position.