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

Image of the week

Full circle

In the ITER Assembly Hall, the circle of the lower cryostat thermal shield is now complete. A lot of work remains to be done, however, before the silver-plated component is inserted into the assembly pit in about one month.

A relatively frail component (20 metres in diameter, 50 tonnes), the lower cryostat thermal shield will be inserted into the assembly pit in about one month. (Click to view larger version...)
A relatively frail component (20 metres in diameter, 50 tonnes), the lower cryostat thermal shield will be inserted into the assembly pit in about one month.
"We need to check the alignment of the 18 panels, tighten the bolts, remove the internal supports, and install the instrumentation and piping," explains Germàn Perez Michel, the mechanical engineer who oversees the operation.

Soon, a dedicated circular lifting tool will be assembled to raise the relatively frail component (20 metres in diameter, 50 tonnes) and deliver it to its final position inside the cryostat base.

The lower cryostat thermal shield will fit inside the soup-dish-shaped depression of the cryostat base to form a heat barrier protecting the magnets at superconducting temperature.

The thin layer of silver (a low-emissivity material) that covers its entire surface raises an obstacle against the thermal radiation, in the form of electromagnetic waves, that a heat source generates.



return to the latest published articles