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

A giant's first steps



In Korea, manufacturing has begun for one of ITER's largest and most spectacular pieces of machinery: the first of a pair of 22-metre high, 800-tonne Sector Sub-Assembly tools.

"The Sector Sub-Assembly tools are not only imposing in size, but they are actually complex systems, with a lot of sub-components, precision actuators and powerful hydraulic engines," says Hyung-Yeol Yang, ITER Korea's director for advanced technology research.

Standing shoulder to shoulder under the high ceiling of the Assembly Building, the Sector Sub-Assembly tools will suspend each of the nine vacuum vessel sectors in order to install toroidal field coils and thermal shielding. The resulting 1,200-tonne sub-assemblies will be transferred to the Tokamak Complex and integrated into the machine.

On 15 February, the contractor Taekyung Heavy Industry commenced material cutting. The first of the twin Sector Sub-Assembly tools should be ready by October this year for a battery (six months) of factory acceptance tests, followed by delivery to ITER in mid-2017.

The twin giants are but the most spectacular of the 128 purpose-built assembly tools that Korea will procure for the ITER Project.


return to the latest published articles