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

  • 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

  • Deputy Director-General | Luo Delong, Corporate

    Many years later, when the Ministry of Science and Technology assigned him to the ITER Project, Luo Delong was to remember the day when, as a young boy, he read [...]

    Read more

  • Visit | Japanese MEXT Minister tours the installation

    In Japan, a MEXT Minister has a lot on his or her plate: the extensive Ministry is a huge administrative machine whose purview includes education, culture, [...]

    Read more

Of Interest

See archived entries

ITER NEWSLINE -

Small delivery for a very massive tool

The first components of the sector sub-assembly tool have reached ITER; four more batches are planned in the coming months. The 90 crates of material will be stored in the Cleaning Facility (the smaller building in the photo) until tool assembly begins. (Click to view larger version...)
The first components of the sector sub-assembly tool have reached ITER; four more batches are planned in the coming months. The 90 crates of material will be stored in the Cleaning Facility (the smaller building in the photo) until tool assembly begins.
At ITER, two massive sector sub-assembly tools will suspend and equip the vacuum vessel sectors in the Assembly Hall before they are transported by overhead crane to the Tokamak Pit for installation.

Following fabrication, assembly and testing in Korea, the first of the giant tools (22 m tall, 800 tonnes) is on its way to ITER in batches. The first crates reached the site on 22 June.

A dedicated storage area has been prepared in the antechamber to the Assembly Hall, the Cleaning Facility, for the successive batches of components. The first installation activities will begin in September, with the installation of the first rail components on the concrete basemat. The structure of the tool will require approximately three months to build.

The weight of the suspended vacuum vessel sectors is anchored by three massive columns, while lateral ''wings'' will slowly rotate the other components of the sector sub-assembly (two toroidal field coils and thermal shielding) in for alignment and installation. (Click to view larger version...)
The weight of the suspended vacuum vessel sectors is anchored by three massive columns, while lateral ''wings'' will slowly rotate the other components of the sector sub-assembly (two toroidal field coils and thermal shielding) in for alignment and installation.
As part of site acceptance tests, the tool will be tested with a 310-tonne load—the weight of one of the two toroidal field coils that will be rotated and attached as each vacuum vessel sector is suspended vertically.

The on-time arrival of the first tool components validates one of ITER Project's 2017 milestones.

Read more about the tool here.

return to the latest published articles