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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 [...]

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  • 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 [...]

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  • 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 [...]

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  • 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 [...]

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  • 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 [...]

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Of Interest

See archived entries

Roll them, turn them, bolt them: ITER assembly in high definition

The arrival of the first components on the ITER site will be the starter pistol for one of the most complex stage shows ever performed: the assembly of the ITER machine. In a first video back in 2011—The world's largest puzzle—we explained the challenging task of assembling the cryostat.

In a new video titled Roll them, turn them, bolt them, the job is taken one step further as we look at the installation of ITER's in-vessel components such as the in-vessel coils, the blanket system and the divertor. None of these are easy tasks and a set of custom-made tools, platforms and cranes will be needed to transfer the bulky components from the Assembly Building, through port cells and into their final positions.

 (Click to view larger version...)
The production of this eight-minute animation was certainly not as challenging as the assembly of the world's largest fusion device, yet it was no small matter. Some 31,688 individual objects had to be managed per scene requiring the experienced hands of four graphic artists and animation specialists from the German-based company Motion-e-Motion. Their job was to sort out vast CATIA data sets describing the ITER machine, to reduce them, and then to "map, shade and rig" (in video terms). Eight computers with powerful Intel i7 processors took on the job, sweating for 168 long hours to render the data into a high-definition movie.



Click here to view the video...



Many more videos are available on the ITER video page...

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