
Attached to the gantry crane, the coil is now vertically aligned with the open cryostat. The 36 sections of the upper cryostat, visible inside the circular structure, will eventually be assembled and welded before testing begins.
Whether performed at room temperature or at 80 K (

Inside the cryostat, the coil will experience extreme cold, intense pressure, high voltage and considerable thermal stresses—a foretaste of its life to come in the daunting environment of a burning plasma.
"As the gantry crane can only move along the rails in the longitudinal direction it is of the utmost importance that the cryostat be installed in the correct coordinates," explains Mónica Martínez, the European Domestic Agency's (F4E's) Technical Officer for poloidal field coils. Aligning the crane's laser pointer to a simple point marked on the building's floor does the trick: the coil can be gently lowered into the cryostat where it will spend more than one month, experiencing extreme cold, intense pressure, high voltage and considerable thermal stresses—a foretaste of its life to come.