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

ITER NEWSLINE -

Smallest ring magnet takes shape in Russia

The first of eight winding packs for poloidal field coil #1 (PF1) undergoes epoxy impregnation at the Srednenevsky Shipbuilding Plant in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The resin—acting inside of a sealed mould and under the effect of heat—hardens the tape to bond each double pancake into a rigid assembly. (Click to view larger version...)
The first of eight winding packs for poloidal field coil #1 (PF1) undergoes epoxy impregnation at the Srednenevsky Shipbuilding Plant in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The resin—acting inside of a sealed mould and under the effect of heat—hardens the tape to bond each double pancake into a rigid assembly.
The fabrication of poloidal field coil #1 (PF1)—one of ITER's six ring-shaped magnets—is in progress at the Srednenevsky Shipbuilding Plant in Saint Petersburg, Russia, where specialists from JSC "SNSP" and the Efremov Institute (NIIEFA) are winding the second double pancake of the future coil.

Poloidal field coils are built from niobium-titanium (NbTi) superconductors that are wound into flat coils called pancakes. Winding is a multistage process during which conductor from two spools ("double-hand") is wrapped with insulating tape and wound into the dimensions corresponding to each coil.

Because they are key to the successful operation of the machine, the magnets are subject to strict ITER Organization requirements at every stage of the manufacturing process, from qualifying materials to controlling the properties of the finished items. The Russian specialists first received the green light on a full-scale prototype double pancake before starting serial production.

Most of the winding equipment has been designed, manufactured, and tested at the Efremov Institute, which also developed some of the poloidal field coil manufacturing processes; JSC "SNSP" has contributed a number of science-based technologies. In 2014, all equipment was transported to the Srednenevsky Shipbuilding Plant, located in an area which is a well suited to the needs of transporting the completed component.

Eight double pancakes will be stacked to form the final coil, which will weigh 300 tonnes.

return to the latest published articles