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

  • Image of the week | More cladding and a new message

    As the October sun sets on the ITER worksite, the cladding of the neutral beam power buildings takes on a golden hue. One after the other, each of the scientifi [...]

    Read more

  • Cryodistribution | Cold boxes 20 years in the making

    Twenty years—that is how long it took to design, manufacture and deliver the cold valve boxes that regulate the flow of cryogens to the tokamak's vacuum system. [...]

    Read more

  • Open Doors Day | Face to face with ITER immensity

    In October 2011, when ITER organized its first 'Open Doors Day,' there was little to show and much to leave to the public's imagination: the Poloidal Field [...]

    Read more

  • Fusion | Turning neutrons into electricity

    How will the power generated by nuclear fusion reactions be converted into electricity? That is not a question that ITER has been designed to answer explicitly, [...]

    Read more

  • Fusion world | JET completes a storied 40-year run

    In its final deuterium-tritium experimental campaign, Europe's JET tokamak device demonstrated plasma scenarios that are expected on ITER and future fusion powe [...]

    Read more

Of Interest

See archived entries

ITER NEWSLINE -

Image of the week

Keeping an eye on the hot (double) pancake

An ITER ring-shaped coil begins its existence as cable-in-conduit conductor, wound into "double pancakes" that are eventually stacked one upon the other to form the winding pack at the core of the finalized coil. At one point in the fabrication process, each individual double pancake must be resin-impregnated in order to ensure its electrical insulation.

Data fed by approximately one hundred sensors is displayed on large screens and closely examined by the Fusion for Energy team responsible for the impregnation of the first of the eight double pancakes required for poloidal field coil #4. (Click to view larger version...)
Data fed by approximately one hundred sensors is displayed on large screens and closely examined by the Fusion for Energy team responsible for the impregnation of the first of the eight double pancakes required for poloidal field coil #4.
The impregnation process is a long and delicate operation: tightly wrapped in insulating fiberglass tape, the double pancake is placed into a leak-tight mould. Several hundred litres of epoxy resin is injected at a temperature of 55-60 °C. As temperature is ramped up and extra pressure applied, the micro spaces inside the winding are filled and the double pancake eventually turns into a massive, rock solid block the colour of burned caramel.

Temperature, the quality of the vacuum inside the mould, and the intensity of the injection pressure must be closely monitored at all times.

In this image, data fed by approximately one hundred sensors is displayed on large screens and closely examined by the European Domestic Agency (Fusion for Energy) team responsible for the impregnation of the first of eight double pancakes required for poloidal field coil #4 (which will be 24 metres in diameter and weigh 350 tonnes).

Three other double pancakes are in various stages of fabrication in the on-site Poloidal Field Coil Winding Facility: one is ready to be impregnated; another is being finalized, and a third is taking shape on the winding table.

return to the latest published articles