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News & Media

Latest ITER Newsline

  • ITER Design Handbook | Preserving the vital legacy of ITER

    The contributions that ITER is making to fusion physics and engineering—through decades of decisions and implementation—are delivering insights to the fusion co [...]

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  • Electron cyclotron heating | Aligning technology and physics

    ITER, like other fusion devices, will rely on a mix of external heating technologies to bring the plasma to the temperature necessary for fusion. At a five-day [...]

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  • Poloidal field magnets | The last ring

    As the massive ring-shaped coil inched its way from the Poloidal Field Coils Winding Facility, where it was manufactured, to the storage facility nearby where i [...]

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  • Heat rejection | White "smoke" brings good news

    Like a plume of white smoke rising from a cardinals' conclave to announce the election of a new pope, the tenuous vapour coming from one of the ITER cooling cel [...]

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  • WEC 2024 | Energy on centre stage

    The global players in the energy sector convened in Rotterdam last week for the 26th edition of the World Energy Congress (WEC). The venue was well chosen, wit [...]

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Of Interest

See archived entries

ITER NEWSLINE -

Evacuate and dissipate

If ITER were an industrial fusion plant, the better part of the heat generated by the burning plasmas would be used to produce pressurized steam and (by way of turbines and generators) electricity. Only residual heat would need to be dissipated.

Work is ongoing on one of the ''final links'' of the cooling water system: a vast (6,000 m²) zone that accommodates two large basins and a cooling tower installation made of 10 independent cells. Fabrication of the cooling tower elements has begun in India. (Click to view larger version...)
Work is ongoing on one of the ''final links'' of the cooling water system: a vast (6,000 m²) zone that accommodates two large basins and a cooling tower installation made of 10 independent cells. Fabrication of the cooling tower elements has begun in India.
But as an experimental installation, not designed to produce electricity, ITER will need to evacuate and dissipate all the power the fusion reaction generates.

And this means a lot. During the plasma burn phase, the amount of heat to be evacuated from the Tokamak and its auxiliary systems will be in the range of 1100 MW.

The complex system of piping, pumps, open and closed loops that form the ITER cooling water system ends up here, in a 6,000 m² area that accommodates cold and hot basins with a total volume of 20,000 m³ as well as an induced-draft cooling tower installation located above the cold basin.

Seen from above, the cooling water zone at the northeast end of the ITER site. (Click to view larger version...)
Seen from above, the cooling water zone at the northeast end of the ITER site.
These supersize pipes (one metre and more in diameter) for the heat rejection system are designed for a flow rate of two cubic metres per second. (Click to view larger version...)
These supersize pipes (one metre and more in diameter) for the heat rejection system are designed for a flow rate of two cubic metres per second.

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