Click on the thumbnail below to view a live video stream of the ITER Tokamak Building Construction Site, where history's largest fusion device will be assembled. | |
On 29 July, a new milestone was reached in the licensing process of ITER. A little more than one month after being notified that our proposals on the Tokamak's operational conditions and design fulfilled the French safety requirements, we have now received from the Autorité de Sûreté Nucléaire (ASN) the draft of the Décret d'Autorisation de Création — the final green light from the French Authorities to create our installation. We are currently analyzing this draft and we will soon send back our comments to ASN. Then, a discussion will be organized with a college of ASN experts and at long last the final decree will be published — hopefully before the end of the year. This is a lengthy, complex, demanding — sometimes frustrating... — process. But I must say it is also a very good process. ITER is the first fusion installation that will receive a full nuclear licence. And this is very important, not only for us here at ITER but for the whole worldwide fusion community. We have always claimed that fusion is safe and in the past two years, we went through an exceptionally strict and challenging process to demonstrate that it is indeed. Now an independent body of experts, with a deserved reputation for being among the "toughest" in the world, is in the process of validating our claim. And again, this is a first: no fusion installation, not even JET or TFTR which, at one point implemented deuterium + tritium fusion, went through this process. Twenty-seven years have passed since President Reagan and Secretary Gorbatchev met in Geneva and laid the ground for the project of an international experimental fusion reactor "for the benefit of all mankind". We all feel a deep satisfaction in seeing these 27 years of hard work and dedication now converging into a decision that, in many ways, is historical. The two cranes are marking the edges of the assembly hall that is coming out of the ground next to the tokamak pit. On-site digging continues in July for the underground drainage networks. In the background: the first (and largest) of the 39 buildings that will make up the ITER research facility: the Poloidal Field Coils Winding Facility. Photo: F4E Each plinth and seismic bearing assembly measures precisely 1.9 metres in height. Numbering 493 in all, they will bear the weight of the massive Tokamak Complex, estimated at 360,000 tons. Photo: F4E Work advances late June on the northwest facade of the ITER Headquarters. The building will be furnished and ready for its first occupants in mid-September. Photo: ITER Organization Looking north across the ITER platform, where the seismic foundations for the experimental ITER device are now completed, after 18 months of construction work. Photo: F4E In this 4-hectare switchyard on the southwest edge of the platform, seven transformers will dispatch electricity from the 400kV double power line—recently brought over the hill from Cadarache—to ITER's scientific facilities. The power has been "live" in the switchyard since 27 June. Photo: ITER Organization
Chinese Academy of Sciences - (read in english)
24 Sep, 2012
IFMIF Accelerators: Prospects and Challenges |
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