
Approximately 6,000 tonnes of material have been supplied for the heat rejection system by India and installed by ITER Organization contractors. Now, it's time for systems commissioning.
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Thomas Pralus (cooling water engineer in charge of commissioning), Laura de Frutos Bolzoni (control systems integration engineer responsible for integrating cooling water with CODAC), and Thierry Menguy (commissioning and operations management officer) are pictured on the site of the ITER heat rejection system.
The main goal is to be ready for the first client, the cryoplant, which will start commissioning in 2022 and will require a cooling water system by mid-2022. Commissioning is also expected to begin on another secondary loop in 2022—the chilled water system loop—which will be used for the installation's HVAC needs.

Heat rejection system piping, seen from the roof of the cooling towers. Stretched end to end, piping in the cooling water plant zone would reach 5 km.
"We are just getting started with the functional tests now," says de Frutos Bolzoni. "Part of the job is to put operators in front of the new control system. This allows us to check several things, including human interaction, systems operability, alarms, and archiving. We test system robustness, making sure no data is lost under any conditions. We try to test all the scenarios—for example, what happens if the power is cut? If we find a problem, we try to address it immediately and find a solution."