Subscribe options

Select your newsletters:

Please enter your email address:

@

News & Media

Latest ITER Newsline

  • WEST | Revamped tokamak completes 1st phase of operation

    One day, in the latter half of this decade, it will be routine at ITER: dozens of operators, with eyes riveted to their individual monitors as numbers, graphs a [...]

    Read more

  • Roof modules | Patience, precision and a crane's long arm

    In the spring of 2020 a new and strategic phase of ITER construction will begin: the assembly of the ITER Tokamak. In order to deliver machine components to the [...]

    Read more

  • Image of the week | "Bringing light and hope"

    Most international organizations are headquartered in large cities—the UN in New York, UNESCO and the International Energy Agency in Paris, the IAEA in Vienna, [...]

    Read more

  • Outreach in China | A week devoted to fusion

    A new biennial event in China seeks to create a comprehensive exchange platform for the scientists, engineers and industries that are driving the country's stro [...]

    Read more

  • Monaco-ITER Fellows | New campaign announced

    The seventh recruitment campaign for the Monaco-ITER postdoctoral fellowship program opens on 13 January. Since 2008, thirty postdocs have carried out origin [...]

    Read more

Of Interest

See archived entries

ITER NEWSLINE -

17 Apr, 2017

Inside the arena

A visit to the deep "well" where the ITER Tokamak assembly will begin next year begins with a journey underground ... through a maze of giant pillars, omnipresent scaffolding and spiral staircases.

All of the openings in the bioshield will allow access to the tokamak for all of the auxiliary systems needed to run the machine (fuelling, power, cooling, diagnostics, etc.). But the four ovoid-shaped openings that stand out in this picture are reserved for particular equipment—the powerful neutral beam injectors that will provide the bulk of ITER's heating power and the neutral beam used for diagnostics. (Click to view larger version...)
All of the openings in the bioshield will allow access to the tokamak for all of the auxiliary systems needed to run the machine (fuelling, power, cooling, diagnostics, etc.). But the four ovoid-shaped openings that stand out in this picture are reserved for particular equipment—the powerful neutral beam injectors that will provide the bulk of ITER's heating power and the neutral beam used for diagnostics.
This is a place where one can get easily lost. Access, safeguarded pathways, and metal staircases move as work progresses and once-familiar itineraries often turn into dead ends.

But there's a reward to this erring. Having found (and climbed) the proper staircase, the view opens at last to what we have come to see: a concrete arena, bristling with steel rebar. The scene that sets the stage for one of the most awesome experiments in human history.

Soon, though, the view will change. The installation of a temporary steel cap—whose purpose is to protect teams below while allowing work to continue on the bioshield, above—will hide the lowest level of the Tokamak Pit from our view.

return to the latest published articles