Preparation for assembly and commissioning of ITER

Abstract

Abstract Progress is described on the construction of infrastructure and plant systems, and on the manufacturing of the ITER tokamak components and their assembly since the IAEA FEC 2018. Major achievements in this period have been the completion of the tokamak building and installation of the cryostat base and lower section that mark the start of tokamak assembly in 2020. This has been followed by the arrival of key core tokamak components to enable assembly of the first tokamak sector, which is made up of one vacuum vessel (VV) sector, 2 toroidal field (TF) coils and the corresponding thermal shield (TS), and the completion of manufacturing and testing of the first two poloidal field (PF) coils (PF5 and PF6). In parallel with this, the tools required for assembly have been commissioned and plant systems required for operations have progressed in construction and have started or will start commissioning in the near future. The remaining core tokamak components (e.g. the remaining eight VV sectors, TF coils, PF coils and central solenoid (CS) modules) are in advanced manufacturing state or already completed and under testing, as required for the assembly plan to first plasma (FP). In parallel with machine assembly, systems to support plasma operation during the FP and later phases of the ITER research plan (IRP) have made significant progress as well. This includes the plasma control system, for which the final design for FP has been completed, the electron cyclotron heating (ECH) system, diagnostic systems, plasma protection components for FP and the disruption mitigation system (DMS). The IRP itself has also been consolidated and specific issues identified where R&D support by the ITER Members’ fusion communities may refine it further. The consolidation of the IRP has involved changes to the upgrade paths considered in the baseline by the identification of MHD stable plasma scenarios that can meet ITER’s Q = 5 steady-state fusion power goal with neutral beam heating (NBI) and ECH thus removing the need for the installation of a lower hybrid current drive (LHCD) system previously included as an upgrade in the baseline for this specific purpose.