How would you like your steel? Laced with a bit of titanium, niobium or molybdenum for better resistance to corrosion? With as little ferrite as possible in order to be permeable to magnetic fields? Or with added boron for better neutron absorption? At the Industeel-Le Creusot plant in central France, a business unit of the global giant Arcelor-Mittal, steel plates comes in all thicknesses and grades. The steelworks, which was founded in 1836, has evolved into a world-class leader for special, high performance and "niche" steels—precisely the kind that ITER needs.Steel is basically an alloy of iron and carbon. But production has come a long way since the first industrial foundries were established in the 19th century. At Industeel-Le Creusot some 450 different grades are available, reflecting international and domestic standards, and the chemical composition of each one can be tweaked to meet the specific needs of the customer. Out of the mill, off to Korea: It is a rare opportunity to witness the early stages of the birth of an ITER component. In the din and heat of the hot rolling mill at Le Creusot, a lifting clamp seizes a seven-ton steel ingot and transfers it to a waiting conveyor bed of large glowing firebricks where seven similar ingots are waiting. As soon as this last ingot is positioned, the conveyor-bed moves swiftly into the furnace. The ingots will remain there for some ten hours, exposed to a temperature of close to 1,200 °C until they are soft enough to be rolled into 40-millimetre plates. Once properly cut, shot blasted and pickled, the plates will be shipped to Hyundai Heavy Industries in Korea, where they will be shaped into vacuum vessel segments. "Our job is to adapt our formulas accordingly," explains Nathalie Mottu-Bellier, an engineer at Industeel-Le Creusot. "It's all a matter of chemistry..."From the first mockups and prototypes for the ITER vacuum vessel produced in 2004 to present orders from the industries in Korea, India, Russia and Europe for ITER, the steelworks in Le Creusot has booked some 10,000 tonnes of steel plates in a dozen different grades and ranging in thickness from 5 to 150 millimetres. "Such a large tonnage for a single project is quite exceptional," emphasizes Nathalie. "The grades of steel we're providing are clearly the top of our line of production." Components in the ITER machine (and oftentimes parts within the components) must meet various functional, safety and technological requirements. Some are exposed to the ultra-hot plasma and high vacuum, others to the extreme cold of the cryogenic fluid; some must be completely permeable to magnetic fields, others, on the contrary, must act to influence them... The required steel quality is achieved through the subtle dosage of various elements (such as boron, chrome, nickel, niobium, molybdenum, etc.) and through particular manufacturing processes. Steel manufacturing often resembles the elaboration of a sophisticated perfume, where fragrances combine to realize the desired effect. In French, the steelmakers use the word "nuance" to characterize the different grades they produce. Chemistry is a key element, but in some cases the manufacturing process can also be crucial. "The Korean company SFA Engineering Corp, who's procuring the thermal shield system, will add a thin layer of silver to the plates that we supply," explains Jean-Christophe Gagnepain, the sales manager at Industeel-Le Creusot. "The quality of this layer depends on the quality of the plate's surface, and ultimately on our production expertise." These steel plates, ready to be shipped to Korea, are for the ITER thermal shield. Industeel-Le Creusot has already shipped 5,000 tonnes of stainless steel plates to India (half of it destined for the ITER cryostat), 3,500 tonnes each to Japan and Korea, and 300 tonnes to Russia. The "steel jewellers" as they dub themselves, are also recyclers: as steel has the particularity of being indefinitely recyclable, all the plates produced at Le Creusot comes from steel scrap, trimmings and cut-offs from, among others, the automotive and construction industries.In a rural area of central France, a steelworks founded in the early years of the 19th century is helping to meet the challenges of one of the most complex machines of the 21st.

It's 7:00 p.m. on Thursday 13 November and the platform is all aglow.   The last workers have returned home and in a few moments the lights will be extinguished, with the exception of the safety signals at the very top of the cranes.   Taken from the roof of the ITER Headquarters building, this photo allows us a rather well-lit view of the far side of the Tokamak Pit, where formwork already frames out the first walls of the Diagnostics Building.   Wall pouring is scheduled to begin this week.  

As the doors of the Assembly Building open to admit the first vacuum vessel sectors shipped from manufacturing sites in Europe or Korea, two imposing custom-built tools will stand ready to receive them. Six storeys high, with wings spreading 20 metres, the sector sub-assembly tools will work side by side to equip the nine sectors of the vacuum vessel before their transfer to the Tokamak Pit, where they will be welded together to form the torus-shaped ITER vacuum chamber. "It's far from a simple operation," says Emma Watson, an engineer who works within the Machine Assembly & Installation Section at ITER. "For each of the nine sectors, the complete sub-assembly operation will take five to six months." To optimize the overall schedule for the nine sectors, two identical tools are planned, each one capable of holding a sector on its end while positioning—and aligning—the associated components.   Standing shoulder to shoulder, two Sector Sub-Assembly tools will suspend the vacuum vessel sectors from the top while carefully positioning and installing—via the rotary motion of the "wings"—the vacuum vessel thermal shielding and two toroidal field coils. The sectors, which will travel from the factories in a horizontal position, will first have to be "upended" by a dedicated tool that is designed to lift the 440-tonne (max) vacuum vessel sectors (7.6 x 6.5 x 13.7 metres) and the 310-tonne toroidal field coils (9 x 3.7 x 17 metres) into their final, vertical orientation.   Then the sector sub-assembly tools will take over, suspending each vacuum vessel sector from its top while carefully positioning and installing—via the rotary motion of the "wings"—the vacuum vessel thermal shields and two toroidal field coils. The sub-assemblies will be maintained in place as the remainder of the operations that must be completed on each 40° sector (such as the installation of some diagnostics, inter-connecting structures and cooling pipes) are carried out.   Made from 800 tonnes of steel, the 22-metre-tall tools will be capable of supporting, aligning, and stabilizing the vacuum vessel sectors and the toroidal field coils independently through a sophisticated array of precision actuators and sensors. "The assembly of the first sector will take the longest time, as assembly procedures based on the results of tests (involving partial component mockups) are honed via the experience gained as the sequences are performed for the first time on real components," says Emma. At different stages in the sub-assembly process, metrology surveys will be used to verify the components' positions. At the end of the process, the final sub-assemblies, weighing a maximum of 1,200 tonnes, will be transferred by the two overhead cranes operating in tandem to the Tokamak Pit.   As part of its procurement contributions to ITER, the Korean Domestic Agency is responsible for the design and fabrication of the sector sub-assembly tool as well as 128 other purpose-built assembly tools.   Korea is responsible for the design and fabrication of the Sector Sub-Assembly tools as well as 127 other purpose-built assembly tools. From 6 to 8 October 2014, a Design Integration Review took place at ITER Headquarters for the first batch of 23 tools. Late October, at ITER Headquarters, a design integration review was held for a sub-group of 23 tools, including the sector sub-assembly tool, in order to assess design progress prior to the final design review planned for December.   The review brought together representatives from the Korean Domestic Agency as well as ITER Organization personnel from the Machine Assembly and Installation and Design Integration sections, and the main interfacing parties for this group of tools (toroidal field, poloidal field, vacuum vessel and thermal shield). For three days, the group assessed the design readiness for each tool, verifying documentation, engineering calculations, analyses, interfaces and access.   The successful outcome of this review is a clear indicator that the design of this first group of 23 tools is sufficiently mature to achieve final design review status—a prerequisite to starting manufacturing preparations.   The final design review for this group of 23 tools is scheduled in December.   See a short video sequence of the sector sub-assembly tool in action here.

​On Friday 14 November, the first Highly Exceptional Load (HEL) destined to the ITER site was loaded onto the container ship CMA-Ivanhoe in the port of Busan, South Korea, to begin its five-week journey to France. On board is the 87-ton main body of one high voltage substation transformer unit (part of the ITER steady state electrical network) as well as 39 wooden crates packed with the transformer's auxiliary components. The equipment was procured by the US and manufactured by Hyundai Heavy Industry in Ulsan, South Korea. Three identical transformers will be shipped to ITER in the coming months.   Ivanhoe should reach the Mediterranean harbour of Fos-sur-Mer on 19 December. There, the transformer main body will be unloaded and staged until 9 January 2015, when it will be transferred to a trailer.   The trailer will be loaded onto a barge to cross the inland sea Étang-de-Berre before travelling 104 kilometres along the ITER Itinerary, for delivery to  the ITER site in the early hours of 14 January.

​FuseNet, the European platform to coordinate and improve fusion education, has launched a new student support scheme in cooperation with and funded by the EUROfusion consortium: - Support for Master students to go abroad for an internship in a fusion group or at a research institute. - Support for Master and PhD students to follow educational training activities external to their own organisation (such as summer schools, master classes and workshops with a dominant educational character). - Support for PhD students to take part in research at another universities' fusion group or at a research laboratory for shorter periods than a full internship. Being a member of FuseNet, the ITER Organization is entitled to make use of this very attractive scheme by offering internships at ITER or research trips for PhD students. For more information please check the FuseNet website.  

​Some 135 researchers, graduate students, and staff members from the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL, US)) joined 1,500 research scientists from around the world at the 56th annual meeting of the American Physical Society Division of Plasma Physics Conference from 27 to 31 October in New Orleans. Topics in the sessions ranged from waves in plasma to the physics of ITER and women in plasma physics. Dozens of PPPL scientists presented the results of their cutting-edge research in magnetic fusion and plasma science. There were about 100 invited speakers at the conference, more than a dozen of whom were from PPPL. Read the full article and access the topical press releases on the PPPL website.

​With near-surgical precision, technicians at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL, US) hoisted the 29,000-pound (13,000-kilo) centre stack for the National Spherical Torus Experiment-Upgrade, NSTX-U, over a 20-foot (6-metre) wall and lowered it into the vacuum vessel of the fusion facility. The smooth operation on 24 October capped more than two years of construction of the centre stack, which houses the bundle of magnetic coils that form the heart of the $94 million (EUR 19 million) upgrade. "This was really a watershed moment," said Mike Williams, the head of engineering and infrastructure at PPPL and associate director of the Laboratory. "The critical path [or key sequence of steps for the upgrade] was fabrication of the magnets, and that has now been done." The lift team conducted the final steps largely in silence, attaching the bundled coils in their casing to an overhead crane and guiding the 21 foot-long (6.4-metre) centre stack into place. The clearances were tiny: the bottom of the casing passed just inches over the shielding wall and the top of the vacuum vessel. Inserting the centre stack into the vessel was like threading a needle, since the clearance at the opening was only about an inch. Guidance came chiefly from hand signals, with some radio communication at the end. Read the full article on the PPPL website.