Wrapped and ready to go
Working around the clock over the past few months to complete a series of preparatory activities on vacuum vessel sector #4 has paid off. The sector will be ready to move into the Assembly Hall as soon as a place in tooling becomes available later this month.
In approximately one week, vacuum vessel sector module #5 will be transferred into the tokamak pit, leaving one of the sector sub-assembly tools in the Assembly Hall without a "client." Not for long, though. The SIMANN consortium, tasked by the ITER Organization with repairing the bevel (joint) regions of the vacuum vessel sectors, has been timing its work on sector #4—the next in the sequence—to coincide so that downtime for the assembly tools could be minimized.
When sector #4 was delivered by the European Domestic Agency in May, one set of bevel joints had been repaired (those on the exposed side) but not the other. The sector had to be rotated in an outdoor operation before the contractors could access the second side and bring the bevel non-conformities back to specification to within tolerances of only +/-0.1 millimetres. With that accomplished, two other tasks remained: the welding of outer shell "bosses" (small studs that can be used to attach components), and the installation of diagnostic equipment such as sensors and cables.
Working in three shifts, the SIMANN team met the tight deadline, and sector #4 is now wrapped and ready for transfer to the Assembly Hall.