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Every week since the beginning of November, a tube trailer filled with approximately 4,600 cubic metres (750 kg) of compressed gaseous helium delivers its load [...]
Training | Seeking the next group of Monaco-ITER Fellows
Recruitment opens for the next Monaco-ITER Postdoctoral Fellowship campaign on 17 January 2022. If your PhD was awarded after 1 January 2019—or you are about to [...]
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Image of the week | Final activities on Europe's first sector
The first vacuum vessel sector produced in Europe will arrive at ITER next year. Five of ITER's nine vacuum vessel sectors are the responsibility of Europe's AM [...]
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In life as in the assembly of the ITER machine, 'lessons learned' are what makes progress possible. Gains in wisdom, time, skill, investment can be incremental; [...]
Just like a thermos provides the insulation to keep your coffee warm—or your water cold—the ITER cryostat raises a barrier around the superconducting magnets that limits the possibility of heat exchange with the outside environment.
In the Cryostat Workshop on site, two sections of the cryostat are now in assembly in tandem. Here, the team stands inside the ring of the lower cylinder, tier one (30 metres in diameter). An initial pass of the welding tools has all segments now joined; the second tier segments—en route now from India—will top the first, creating a 10-metre-high structure.
Where coffee is concerned, the temperature gradient is small—even on a cold day, the beverage inside the thermos is only a few dozen degrees hotter (or colder) than the air outside. In ITER, the gradient is huge: with superconducting magnets cooled to a few degrees above absolute zero, the difference with the outside environment is in the range of 270 degrees Celsius.
Vacuum (an almost perfect insulator) is used in both a thermos and the ITER cryostat to provide insulation. In the first case, vacuum is sandwiched between the two "walls" of the container; in the second, the vessel itself—a ten-storey structure with a volume of 8,500 m³—is the vacuum chamber.
Part of the procurement responsibilities of India, the cryostat is being manufactured in 54 segments by Indian contractor Larsen & Toubro and shipped to the ITER Cryostat Workshop for assembly.
Over the past year and a half, we have seen the cryostat base take shape; now, work is underway simultaneously on the next section—the lower cylinder. Side by side, these components-in-progress give a true sense of the awesome size of the cryostat.
