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

  • Fusion world | Japan and Europe inaugurate largest tokamak in the world

    It was 6:00 a.m. in La Bergerie, a former sheep barn located a few kilometres from ITER in the vast Château de Cadarache domain, and that had been converted [...]

    Read more

  • Stakeholders | ITER Director-General meets Prime Minister Kishida

    In Japan, the prime minister lives and works at the Prime Minister's Official Residence in central Tokyo, just a few blocks from the National Diet Building and [...]

    Read more

  • Image of the week | Season wrapping

    Although the travel distance is short, barely exceeding one hundred metres, the transfer of vacuum vessel sector #8 from the Assembly Hall, where it is presentl [...]

    Read more

  • In memoriam | Bernard Pégourié, physicist and mountaineer

    The worldwide fusion community mourns Bernard Pégourié, of France's Institute for Magnetic Fusion Research (CEA-IRFM), who passed away on 25 November following [...]

    Read more

  • COP28 | Fusion is making a splash

    The 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP28, opened on 30 November in Dubai's Expo City—a sprawling conference centre built two years ago for the W [...]

    Read more

Of Interest

See archived entries

70 tonnes of switching network components from Russia

Direct current aluminium busbars are prepared for shipment at the Efremov Institute, in Russia. Over five kilometres—or 500 tonnes of material--will be needed to connect ITER's superconducting magnets to their power supplies. (Click to view larger version...)
Direct current aluminium busbars are prepared for shipment at the Efremov Institute, in Russia. Over five kilometres—or 500 tonnes of material--will be needed to connect ITER's superconducting magnets to their power supplies.
Seventy tonnes of equipment has been shipped from Russia for ITER's switching network and fast discharge units.

The shipment, which left Saint Petersburg on 5 December for a first stop in Kiel, Germany, includes direct current aluminium busbars for the poloidal field coils, correction coils and central solenoid; busbar thermal expansion absorbers; and other DC busbar components. Busbars—the components that connect the superconducting magnets with their power supply—are capable of carrying 70kA of current.

The switching networks for ITER's coil power supplies will trigger the pulses in the circuits of the central solenoid and poloidal field coil numbers 1 and 6 for the initiation of the plasma. The fast discharge units are used to protect the superconducting coils in case of a quench (a sudden loss of superconductivity). All components for these systems are under development at the Efremov Institute (NIIEFA) in St. Petersburg, which has world-recognized expertise in this area.

The fabrication and supply of switching equipment, busbars and energy absorbing resistors for power supply and protection of the superconducting magnetic system is the most expensive—and one of the most complicated—of the 25 systems falling within the scope of Russia's procurement responsibility. According to the terms of the Procurement Arrangement signed in 2011, the Efremov Institute will manufacture and deliver approximately 5.4 km of busbars with a total weight exceeding 500 tonnes.

The shipment that is on the way will be the second delivery of switching network equipment to ITER from Russia.



return to the latest published articles