Milestone Reached at World's First Fusion Reactor

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Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland)--The first and heaviest component of the world's first planned fusion reactor has been successfully installed at the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) at Cadarache in southeastern France.

The 1,250-tonne steel base of the cryostat, which will insulate the magnetic system at cryogenic temperature from the outside environment, was lifted from its frame, carried across the Assembly Hall to the Tokamak Building over the course of a day and eventually lowered into the Tokamak assembly pit. Shaped like a large soup plate, the base is the largest part of the cryostat that will eventually measure 30 metres high and 30 metres wide. It has taken 10 years to design, manufacture, deliver, assemble and weld.

It took more than a day to lift it from its steel cradle and move just 110 metres to the pit, before the base was lowered into a deep concrete cylinder onto 12 hydraulic jacks that will support its weight.

"The coming moments will stand out in the minds and memories of us all. What you will accomplish today, as a team, is something that has never been done before in history - and although you have rehearsed it many times, it will be a first-of-a-kind operation," said ITER Director-General Bernard Bigot at the start of the operation to install the component. "We trust the engineering calculations, strategy and control. We trust the materials science. We trust the metrology. But my confidence today is because I trust you to work as one committed and highly professional team, convinced as we all are that failure is not an option."

The 20 billion-euro ($23.5 billion) Tokamak project is an international collaboration between the European Union (EU), China, India, Japan, Korea, Russia and the United States. It has been classed as the most complex science project in human history. The 500-megawatt (MW) tokamak fusion device will need an input of 50 MW and will aim to prove the feasibility of fusion as a large-scale and carbon-free source of energy. The EU is contributing almost half of the cost, and the target for first plasma is 2025.

The heart of a tokamak is its doughnut-shaped vacuum chamber. Inside, under the influence of extreme heat and pressure, gaseous hydrogen fuel becomes a plasma where hydrogen atoms can be brought to fuse and yield energy. The hydrogen fusion, controlled by superconducting magnets, will produce massive heat energy which will be used to drive turbines to produce electricity. Unlike current nuclear power where energy is created by splitting atoms, a fusion reaction, according to ITER, happens by fusing atoms together. The hydrogen plasma will be heated to 150 million degrees Celsius, 10 times hotter than the core of the sun, to enable the fusion reaction. If successful, it will produce three to four times more power than conventional nuclear, but benefit by not having the associated costs of high-level radioactive waste disposal like nuclear nor the emissions associated with fossil fuel plants.

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