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Latest ITER Newsline
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Image of the week | Tokamak-sur-mer
At the height of the heat wave, in late June, surface temperature on the ITER worksite climbed to the 50 °C range. To continue work—and protect workers—a series [...]
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Space propulsion | Have fusion, will travel
The idea of propelling rockets and spaceships using the power of the atom is nothing new: the Manhattan Project in the mid-1940s as well as countless endeavours [...]
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Cold fusion | End of story?
Thirty years ago, two electrochemists at the University of Utah, Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, created a sensation when they claimed they had achieved fu [...]
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Magnet feeders | Wave of deliveries ahead
Several batches of magnet feeder components will arrive from China in September containing elements that need to be received, inspected and readied for installa [...]
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Tokamak cooling system procurement | Global team for better efficiency
A unique work-sharing arrangement is expediting the design and fabrication of ITER's tokamak cooling water system and building the knowledge base that will be c [...]
ITER NEWSLINE -
And now, it's for keeps!
At first view, nothing distinguishes the current operations in the Poloidal Field Coils Winding Facility from those that got underway last November: steel-jacketed conductor is being unspooled, straightened, cleaned, bent to the correct angle, and wrapped with layers of insulating tape ... technicians in white lab coats are carefully performing dimensional checks ... and there is the same machine hum and flash of orange lights.
The real thing—production winding—has started for poloidal field coil #5. In this on-site facility at ITER, Europe will produce the four largest poloidal field coils.
The difference lies in the heart of the steel-jacketed component. In the dummy conductor, the strands were one hundred percent copper. This less-expensive material—which respected the actual dimensions of the true conductor—was a good choice for qualifying the production line; contractors used it to first produce a semi-winding (four turns) and then a full two-layer dummy double pancake.
In the actual conductor, the strands consist of a mix of copper and of the superconducting alloy niobium-titanium. Four poloidal field coils (out of the six needed for the machine), will be manufactured by Europe in the Poloidal Field Coils Winding Facility. With diameters of 17 to 24 metres and weights ranging from 200 to 400 tonnes, these impressive components will require approximately 18 months each to manufacture.
Two smaller ring coils, with diameters of approximately 8 metres, are in production now in Russia and China.
See a recent report from the European Domestic Agency on fabrication activities for poloidal field coils #5 and #6 here.
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