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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 [...]

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  • ITER Robots | No two alike

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  • Data archiving | Operating in quasi real time

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  • 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 [...]

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  • 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 [...]

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Of Interest

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Image of the week

Don't get mixed up!

In case of a sudden loss of superconductivity in the ITER magnets (a "quench") the helium that circulates in the coils will be almost instantly discharged into dedicated double-wall quench tanks.

This complex set of hand valves and local readings of pressure, temperature and flow is part of the cooling loop that maintains the temperature inside the quench tanks at 100 K. It will provide field operators with a convenient tool for maintenance operations. (Click to view larger version...)
This complex set of hand valves and local readings of pressure, temperature and flow is part of the cooling loop that maintains the temperature inside the quench tanks at 100 K. It will provide field operators with a convenient tool for maintenance operations.
If the tanks were at ambient temperature, the thermal shock caused by cryogenic helium discharged from the magnets at just above 4 K (minus 269 °C) would result in considerable stress and shrinkage to the tank structures.

In order to prevent such a potentially damaging event, the inner vessels of the tanks must be cooled to cryogenic temperature whenever the machine is in operation. This is achieved through a cooling loop that maintains the temperature inside the tanks at 100 K (minus 173 °C)—a temperature at which shrinking has already occurred.

This valve and instrumentation panel outside of the cryoplant is part of that loop. Although measurement signals and activators from all cryogenic systems interface with the CODAC human-machine interface in the local cryo-control room, the outdoor instrumentation panel with its dozens of hand valves and local readings of pressure, temperature and flow provides field operators with a convenient tool for maintenance operations.

 


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