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Top management | ITER Council appoints new Director-General
Convening in an extraordinary session in Paris, the ITER Council has appointed Pietro Barabaschi as the next Director-General of the ITER Organization. Mr Barab [...]
In a first at ITER, the gates of the monumental worksite opened on Saturday 17 September for a family-only Open Doors Day event, reserved for the families of st [...]
Twenty-four electromagnetic wave generators called gyrotrons are at the heart of electron cyclotron resonance heating—the system on ITER that will ini [...]
Fusion world | Science to resume at Wendelstein 7-X
Improved equipment on Wendelstein 7-X will permit the stellarator device to achieve new scientific heights in a campaign planned to begin this autumn. Science a [...]
ITER International School | On operation scenarios and control
The 11th ITER International School concluded successfully in San Diego, USA, on 29 July after five days of lectures and discussions on the development of tokama [...]
A powerful crane and worker dexterity - that's what is needed to precisely position the 87-ton component onto the supports that span the gravel-covered pit.
The four US-procured transformers that will be needed to distribute power to the ITER installation have all reached the ITER site. The first one had been the first Highly Exceptional Load to travel along the ITER Itinerary in January; three more were delivered on 21 May in a single transport operation.
A mere two hours after arrival, one of the four transformers was readied for installation on the platform in the vicinity of the the 400 kV switchyard. A powerful crane was used to position the 87-ton component on its dedicated pad; the same operation was duplicated the following day. Two transformers are now place—the first installed components of the ITER plant.
The pad onto which each transformer is solidly anchored covers a 1.5-metre-deep, gravel-covered pit that has been dimensioned to receive the 44 cubic metres of oil the component contains (oil is used as an insulator) in case of a leak. Eight-metre walls stand between the pads to prevent a possible fire in one transformer from spreading to the others.
The four transformers will bring down the voltage from 400 kV to the standard 20 kV of industrial installations. "ITER could operate with only three transformers but for reasons of flexibility and redundancy, we have opted for four," explains ITER Electrical Power Distribution section leader Joël Hourtoule.
The second pair of transformers will be installed in the coming weeks.
View a slide show of the convoy and transformer installation below.
