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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 [...]

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  • 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 [...]

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  • 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 [...]

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  • 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 [...]

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  • 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 [...]

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Of Interest

See archived entries

ITER NEWSLINE -

Open Doors Day

Face to face with ITER immensity

In October 2011, when ITER organized its first "Open Doors Day," there was little to show and much to leave to the public's imagination: the Poloidal Field Coils Winding Facility wasn't yet finalized, the electrical switchyard was just a forest of pylons, and at the bottom of a large 17-metre-deep excavation on the platform, installation work had just begun on the anti-seismic system of the Tokamak Complex. The visitors of twelve years ago however sensed that something unique was beginning to take shape. Last week on Saturday, as the doors of ITER were opened wide once again, the immensity and complexity of the project hit each and everyone of the approximately 800 participants.

Close to 800 visitors, young and old, passed the open doors of ITER on Saturday 25 November and took in the immensity and complexity of the project. (Click to view larger version...)
Close to 800 visitors, young and old, passed the open doors of ITER on Saturday 25 November and took in the immensity and complexity of the project.
Conceived and organized for the public, Open Doors Day is also a unique opportunity for "ITER workers," whichever organization or company they belong to, to share their passion and expertise. This year, a record 75 volunteers, including ITER Director-General Pietro Barabaschi, guided the public and provided explanations and perspective.

New features are offered at every event, as progress is made on the worksite and more components are finalized and delivered. On Saturday, the public particularly appreciated the viewpoints through plexiglass panes into the Tokamak assembly pit—a bit like an aquarium view on a mysterious subterranean world. Also impressive was the recently cocooned cryostat top lid, which gave a sense of the exceptional dimensions of the ITER machine.

And of course there was the magic of physics made fun—the plasma ball, the expanding marshmallows, the tricks magnetism can play... all courtesy of the usual partners Petits débrouillards, United Crocos of Marseille and, last but not least, the in-house "plasmagicians."

 

 

 

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