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

  • Busbar installation | Navigating an obstacle course

    What is simple and commonplace in the ordinary world, like connecting an electrical device to a power source, often takes on extraordinary dimension at ITER. Wh [...]

    Read more

  • Vacuum vessel assembly | Back in the starting blocks

    Close to two years have passed since vacuum vessel assembly was halted when defects were identified in the ITER tokamak's vacuum vessel sectors and thermal shie [...]

    Read more

  • Ride 4 Fusion | Scientific outreach on two wheels

    A group of fusion researchers has left Padua, Italy, for an 800-kilometre bike trip to the ITER site. Their goal? To share information about fusion energy resea [...]

    Read more

  • 11th ITER Games | Good fun under the Provencal sun

    A yearly tradition in the ITER community for more than a decade now, the ITER Games offer a pleasant way to reconnect among colleagues and neighbours after the [...]

    Read more

  • Manufacturing | Recent milestones in Russia

    Russia continues to deliver in-kind components to the ITER project according to procurement arrangements signed with the ITER Organization. Some recent manufact [...]

    Read more

Of Interest

See archived entries

ITER NEWSLINE -

Manufacturing

A blast of heat to test Europe's plasma-facing components

At the HELCZA experimental and testing facility in the Czech Republic, the European Domestic Agency is about to begin high heat flux tests on blanket first wall prototypes.

The exterior of the HELZCA vacuum chamber. The facility is designed for the cyclic heat loading of ITER plasma-facing components. © CVŘ (Click to view larger version...)
The exterior of the HELZCA vacuum chamber. The facility is designed for the cyclic heat loading of ITER plasma-facing components. © CVŘ
Blanket first wall panels are the detachable, front-facing elements of the ITER blanket that are designed to withstand the heat flux from the plasma. Depending on their position inside the vacuum vessel, the panels are subject to either "normal" heat flux (2 MW/m²) or "enhanced" heat flux (4.7 MW/m²).

For the European Domestic Agency, which is responsible for procuring the "normal" heat flux first wall panels, the high heat flux validation of first wall prototypes will provide important feedback in view of the start of series production.

HELCZA (for High Energy Load Czech Assembly) is designed for this purpose, with a capacity to test ITER plasma-facing components with heat flux densities in the range of several MW/m². Located at the Research Centre Řež in Plzeň, it was financed by the European Domestic Agency (Fusion for Energy) with the support of the European Union and the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic.

HELCZA is designed for cyclic heat loading, with an 800 kW electron beam gun emitting electrons at 55 kV acceleration voltage. The facility is also equipped with a set of advanced diagnostics to monitor component behaviour during testing, and a beryllium management system to ensure the safety of the operators before, during and after the test campaigns.

Performance tests on Europe's first wall full-scale prototypes will start in the next weeks.

See the original article on the Fusion for Energy website.

Read more about HELCZA here.

return to the latest published articles