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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 [...]

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  • 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 [...]

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  • 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 [...]

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  • 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 [...]

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  • 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, [...]

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Of Interest

See archived entries

ITER NEWSLINE -

The flagpole has gone

The Tokamak Pit seen from the east, with the concrete columns of the Poloidal Field Coils Winding Facility looming in the clear blue Provencal sky at the far end. (Click to view larger version...)
The Tokamak Pit seen from the east, with the concrete columns of the Poloidal Field Coils Winding Facility looming in the clear blue Provencal sky at the far end.
The flagpole that has been marking the future centre of the ITER Tokamak ever since the first site clearing works commenced in 2006 has finally been moved aside. The earth and concrete in which it stood over the last four years is gone. These days, huge dump trucks are removing the top soil and dynamite is taking care of the rocky rest. The excavation of the ITER Tokamak Pit is in full swing; the open heart surgery has begun.

For the Tokamak, the pit will have to be excavated down to a depth of 20 metres, whereas for the Hot Cell, which is directly adjacent, the shovels will have to dig down to at least 12 metres. From time to time, analytical measurements record the geological characteristics of the rock foundation.

The columns will soon carry the main crane beams of the Coils Winding Facility. (Click to view larger version...)
The columns will soon carry the main crane beams of the Coils Winding Facility.
Just a hundred metres away from the pit, tall concrete columns of almost 10 metres in height loom into the clear blue Provencal sky, soon to carry the main crane beams of the winding facility for ITER's poloidal field coils.

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