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

  • 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

  • Deputy Director-General | Luo Delong, Corporate

    Many years later, when the Ministry of Science and Technology assigned him to the ITER Project, Luo Delong was to remember the day when, as a young boy, he read [...]

    Read more

  • Visit | Japanese MEXT Minister tours the installation

    In Japan, a MEXT Minister has a lot on his or her plate: the extensive Ministry is a huge administrative machine whose purview includes education, culture, [...]

    Read more

Of Interest

See archived entries

Thermal shield

Practising the embrace

In the ITER Assembly Hall, fitting tests are underway on two outboard thermal shield panels.

Attached to ''wings'' of the sector sub-assembly tools the two outboard panels are brought within a very short distance of one another. Later in the week, they will be aligned in their final position in preparation for the actual pre-assembly operations. (Click to view larger version...)
Attached to ''wings'' of the sector sub-assembly tools the two outboard panels are brought within a very short distance of one another. Later in the week, they will be aligned in their final position in preparation for the actual pre-assembly operations.
Once paired, the 11-metre-tall, silver-plated components will fit like a glove over the outboard surface of vacuum vessel sector #6.

Procured by Korea, the vacuum vessel thermal shield fits between the vacuum vessel and magnetic system of the machine and act as a barrier against the transfer of heat to the ultra-cold superconducting coils.

The outboard segments were mounted last month on the "wings" of the sector sub-assembly tool and measured; now, the wings are being rotated inwards ... the ultimate test of the fit of the two components.

Hydraulic cylinders located at the base of the tools urge the rotating platforms forward in the toroidal direction in a "push and clamp" motion. As they approach the suspended vacuum vessel sector, actuators on the rotating platforms permit the components to be positioned with the highest accuracy and adjusted to six degrees of freedom (up and down, side to side, forward and backward, swivel, tilt, and pivot).

Click here to view a time-lapse video of the fitting test.



return to the latest published articles