With the wind blowing at more than five knots from the south, the conditions were ideal for kitesurfers. But they were less ideal for the captain of the BBC Zarate, a container ship docked at Fos-sur-Mer, near Marseille. As he followed the wild dance of the kites in the sky, Captain Viktor Malyshev wondered whether he could risk lifting his cargo—two giant drain tanks for ITER, shipped from the US—out of the storage bay. What if one of the gusts were to press the 79-tonne drain tank against the vessel's side before it could be lowered onto the waiting barge? Was it worth waiting for the weather to improve? After weighing all of the elements with representatives of DAHER, ITER's Logistics Service Provider, as well as with the crane operator and the deck officers, Captain Malyshev climbed onto the bridge to seek final approval from his shipping company back home in the US. Fifteen minutes later he was back on deck, holding his thumb up: let's go! Convoy afloat: the barge with transport trucks already on board was pushed into position alongside the "BBC Zarate." The action got underway immediately. A barge carrying two trucks (that will bring the tanks to ITER Headquarters) was manoeuvred alongside the ship and secured fast. Within minutes, the tanks were lifted safely out of the storage bay and onto the floating convoy.Part of ITER's tokamak cooling water system, the tanks are made of nuclear-grade stainless steel and can hold 231,000 litres of water each. Two other tanks, of similar size, will be delivered shortly in addition to a smaller tank with a volume of 101,000 litres. The tanks are among the first large-scale components to arrive on site because they must be installed in the lowest level of the Tokamak Building early in the construction process.The US-procured drain tanks were manufactured at the Joseph Oat Corporation in Camden, New Jersey, under contract to Areva Federal Services. 

During the construction of the Tokamak Complex, some 80,000 embedded plates need to be positioned in the rebar lattice prior to pouring concrete.   Embedded plates built into the floors, walls and ceilings of the seven-storey structure will provide strong anchorage for equipment such as tanks, piping, cable trays, feeders and diagnostics.   Each plate is assigned a precise position by the construction design documents and 3D Configuration Management Model. However, in some strategic areas of the Tokamak Complex, the steel reinforcement is so dense that specific techniques need to be implemented to position the plates within extremely narrow tolerances.   This is the case with the bioshield—the 3.2-metre-thick circular structure surrounding the Tokamak, whose role is to protect workers and the environment from radiation generated by the fusion reaction.   The bioshield also has another function: it provides robust anchorage for the 18 radial walls of the cryostat "crown," which distributes the considerable forces exerted by the combined mass of the Tokamak machine and the cryostat (25,000 tons) and by their movement during operations.   The structural "suite" formed by the crown, the radial walls and the bioshield is one of the most strategic of the entire installation. A full scale mockup, built to test constructability, has already provided some valuable lessons.   One of the lessons is the temporary replacement, on the inner wall of the bioshield, of the traditional plywood formwork with see-through Plexiglas panes.   "Based on the construction design documents, the precise positioning of the embedded plates and of each of their studs is pencil-marked on the transparent Plexiglas," explains ITER's civil works team coordinator Laurent Patisson. "As we progressively install the steel rods for the bioshield, we can easily detect any potential conflict between their position and that of the plates and therefore adapt as necessary the location of either the rebar or the studs welded on the plates."   Using Plexiglas instead of wooden planks to achieve better precision is nothing revolutionary. But in the utterly complex and challenging world of ITER construction, every detail counts. A plate misplaced by one or two centimetres might seem inconsequential. In ITER, nothing is.

Later this year, when the first lot of cooling water piping under Indian scope arrives at the Mediterranean port of Fos-sur-Mer, a convoy of 50 to 70 trailer trucks will be waiting to transport the containers to the ITER site. And that's just the first batch. Six months later the remaining lots of piping will be shipped from India to France, thereby completing the scope of Indian-procured piping required for the ITER component cooling water, chilled water and heat rejection systems. Following a Final Design Review for first-lot piping one year ago, the Indian Domestic Agency held the Final Design Review for the remaining lots on 27 March in Gandhinagar. The review panel—composed of ITER Organization and ITER India representatives as well as experts from the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd. (NPCIL)—was chaired by MS Shelar from NPCIL. In the sidelines of the meeting, the ITER Organization members of the review panel had the opportunity to visit the cooling tower manufacturing facilities located near Kolkata and Delhi. The company responsible for the final design, Larsen & Toubro, presented its work during the review, including design calculations, analysis, qualification, manufacturability and constructability, and the manufacturing plan; this led to a comprehensive technical discussion among the participants. The review panel appreciated the quality output that had resulted from the hard work and collaborative efforts of Larsen & Toubro, ITER India and the ITER Organization, and gave useful recommendations to be complied with. The review panel will meet again remotely to finalize the technical recommendations for the close-out of the review.

​In this new video the European agency for ITER Fusion for Energy recaps the main progress achieved in ITER construction in 2014 and presents the activities for the year ahead. "2015 is the year of construction," says Romaric Darbour, F4E's Deputy Project Manager. "The works for ten new buildings or facilities will start, including the cryoplant, buildings for magnet power conversion and radio frequency heating, the cooling towers; cleaning facilities and the control building. The construction of the second floor of the Tokamak Building is also expected to begin this summer."

​The April issue of the WEST Newsletter (09) can be downloaded here.The 2nd WEST Governing Board took place on March 5, 2015. WEST international partners have come from China, Europe, India, Japan, Korea and USA to share the progress on the project, joining efforts to achieve the common objective : first plasma in 2016.Series production launched for complementary divertor components. In addition to the ITER-like prototypes to be tested in WEST, the divertor is constituted of complementary elements based on alternative technologies. The series production of these key plasma-facing components has been launched.New European partners for WEST. On March 4, 2015, two European laboratories, KIT (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany) and IPP.CR (Institute of Plasma Physics, Czech Republic) signed a Letter Of Intent to join the collaboration on the WEST project.