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Most of us have experienced it. Turning a corner in one of the Tokamak Building galleries and looking up at the graphic pattern of embedded plates in the concre [...]
Machine | Ensuring port plugs will work as planned
The stainless steel plugs sealing off each Tokamak port opening are not only massive, they are also complex—carrying and protecting some of the precious payload [...]
Networks | Ensuring real-time distributed computing at ITER
Many of the control systems at ITER require quick response and a high degree of determinism. If commands go out late, the state of the machine may have changed [...]
Fusion codes and standards | Award for ITER Japan's Hideo Nakajima
Hideo Nakajima, a senior engineer at ITER Japan, has received an award from the Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers (JSME) for his contribution to the develop [...]
When it travelled the ITER Itinerary last year, or during cold tests in the onsite winding facility, poloidal field coil #6 (PF6) felt rather large and massive. [...]
In the summer of 2017, a circular platform was installed inside of the large steel-and-concrete cylinder of the Tokamak pit. The 200-tonne structure was meant to protect the workers active in the lower levels while providing storage for activities above. The following year, the platform was hoisted some 20 metres to form a temporary roof, where it remained for two years. And finally, last week, the time had come to remove the massive "lid" to allow access to the pit in anticipation of the machine assembly phase. In two days, the 11 segments of the structure were dismantled, lifted and safely stored to be re-used at a later stage of ITER operations.
One of the smaller lid segments is being readied for lifting. In two days, the 11 segments of the structure were dismantled, lifted and safely stored to be re-used at a later stage of ITER operations
In the vast open space of the assembly theatre the powerful overhead cranes were back at work, lifting the lid's segments one by one, transporting them from one hall to the other, and delicately depositing them on the vehicles that would take them to storage—a regular flat-bed trailer for the smaller segments (10 to 20 tonnes), a dedicated self-propelled modular transporter for the two "half moons" weighing close to 80 tonnes each (more details in the image gallery below).
On its way to the self-propelled transport trailer, an 80-tonne half-moon segment passes over the upending tool.
The intense activity in the crane hall, with several elevated platforms moving painters along the rafters just below the crane runway, plus space limitations in the adjacent assembly hall where the upending tool was being prepared for another set of tests, added constraints to the already challenging operation.
But the well-oiled team, once again, proved up to the task. Access to the Tokamak pit is now open to the overhead cranes.
