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

  • Test facility | How do electronics react to magnetic fields?

    A tokamak is basically a magnetic cage designed to confine, shape and control the super-hot plasmas that make fusion reactions possible. Inside the ITER Tokamak [...]

    Read more

  • ITER Robots | No two alike

    More than 500 students took part in the latest ITER Robots challenge. Working from the same instructions and technical specifications, they had worked in teams [...]

    Read more

  • 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

Of Interest

See archived entries

ITER NEWSLINE -

ITER magnets

400-tonne coil taking shape in China

The first poloidal field coil to be installed during the ITER machine assembly phase may be one of the smallest in terms of lateral dimensions, but it tops out its five sister coils in weight due to the number of stacked layers (or double pancakes) that go into its construction. 

A double pancake for poloidal field coil #6 (PF6) undergoes impregnation at the Institute of Plasma Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (ASIPP) in Hefei, China. (Click to view larger version...)
A double pancake for poloidal field coil #6 (PF6) undergoes impregnation at the Institute of Plasma Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (ASIPP) in Hefei, China.
At the Institute of Plasma Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (ASIPP) in Hefei, China, an 80-person team is involved in the fabrication of poloidal field coil #6 (PF6) on behalf of the European Domestic Agency*.

Each poloidal field coil is unique. Depending on the number of double pancakes (the building block of the coil) stacked to form the final assembly and the number of "turns" in each layer, ITER's poloidal field coils vary in weight from 193 tonnes (PF1) to 396 tonnes (PF6), and in diameter from 9 metres (PF1) to 24 metres (PF3 and PF4).

The sixth coil is the only one of the poloidal field set with nine double pancakes, compared to six or eight for the others. It also has double the number of spiral-like turns of the similar-sized PF1—meaning that more conductor is required. Finally, the clamp arrangement for the assembled PF6 coil will be heavier than the others due to an exceptionally thick bottom plate.

By September of this year, the contractor expects to have completed the fabrication process for the nine double pancakes—including winding, impregnation, and the creation of helium and electrical joints.

This will open the way to final assembly activities on the 10-metre-in-diameter coil, such as stacking, joining, ground insulation and final impregnation.

Please see the full report on the European Domestic Agency website.

*The second-smallest ring magnet for ITER is being fabricated in China on the basis of an agreement concluded with the European Domestic Agency.

return to the latest published articles