Subscribe options

Select your newsletters:

Please enter your email address:

@

Your email address will only be used for the purpose of sending you the ITER Organization publication(s) that you have requested. ITER Organization will not transfer your email address or other personal data to any other party or use it for commercial purposes.

If you change your mind, you can easily unsubscribe by clicking the unsubscribe option at the bottom of an email you've received from ITER Organization.

For more information, see our Privacy policy.

News & Media

Latest ITER Newsline

  • Test facility | How do electronics react to magnetic fields?

    A tokamak is basically a magnetic cage designed to confine, shape and control the super-hot plasmas that make fusion reactions possible. Inside the ITER Tokamak [...]

    Read more

  • ITER Robots | No two alike

    More than 500 students took part in the latest ITER Robots challenge. Working from the same instructions and technical specifications, they had worked in teams [...]

    Read more

  • Data archiving | Operating in quasi real time

    To accommodate the first real-time system integrated with the ITER control system, new components of the data archiving system have been deployed. Data archivi [...]

    Read more

  • Repairs | Setting the stage for a critical task

    Like in a game of musical chairs—albeit in slow motion and at a massive scale—components in the Assembly Hall are being transferred from one location to another [...]

    Read more

  • Image of the week | There is life on Planet ITER

    Dated April 2023, this new image of the ITER "planet" places the construction site squarely in the middle. One kilometre long, 400 metres wide, the IT [...]

    Read more

Of Interest

See archived entries

Second test convoy takes to the sea

A six-kilometre-long channel, the Canal de Caronte, leads from the Mediterranean Gulf of Fos into the inland sea Étang de Berre. At its narrowest, along the south shore of the island that encloses the old town of Martigues, its width does not exceed 25 metres.

It is into this constricted waterway that the barge carrying the 800-tonne ITER test convoy navigated on Monday 31 March.

The barge passes the Fort de Bouc lighthouse at the entrance of the oil tanker terminal of Lavéra. (Click to view larger version...)
The barge passes the Fort de Bouc lighthouse at the entrance of the oil tanker terminal of Lavéra.
Pulled by a powerful tug, followed by still another tug and a pusher-puller workboat, the barge deftly negotiated its passage through the canal and under the Martigues drawbridge, a spectacular sight that marks the entrance into Étang de Berre.

Shortly before the barge entered the channel, ITER Director-General Osamu Motojima—accompanied by Agence Iter France managing director Pierre-Marie Delplanque and Colonel Thierry Cailloz, second in command of the PACA region Gendarmerie—joined her in the Gulf of Fos aboard a Coast Guard (Gendarmerie maritime) patrol boat.

Pulled by a powerful tug, followed by still another tug , the barge enters the six-kilometre-long Canal de Caronte that leads into the Étang de Berre. (Click to view larger version...)
Pulled by a powerful tug, followed by still another tug , the barge enters the six-kilometre-long Canal de Caronte that leads into the Étang de Berre.
Due to unfavorable conditions (waves measuring more than one metre) the crossing had been postponed in the morning. But by 2:00 p.m. the waves had abated and the barge was able to safely reach its destination, the LyondellBasell refinery site on the opposite shore of the Étang.

Aboard the Gendarmerie Maritime patrol boat, from left to right: Agence Iter France managing director Pierre-Marie Delplanque, ITER Director-General Osamu Motojima and Colonel Thierry Cailloz, second in command of the PACA region Gendarmerie. (Click to view larger version...)
Aboard the Gendarmerie Maritime patrol boat, from left to right: Agence Iter France managing director Pierre-Marie Delplanque, ITER Director-General Osamu Motojima and Colonel Thierry Cailloz, second in command of the PACA region Gendarmerie.
By Tuesday afternoon, the trailer and its load had been disembarked and had reached the town of Berre. In Berre today, and in Lambesc tomorrow afternoon, Agence Iter France (the CEA agency that coordinates transport on the ITER Itinerary) has organized a "welcome station" where the public can find information on the convoys and their importance for the ITER Project.

Click to view the videos posted by the local media La Provence and Maritima-Info.



return to the latest published articles