The sixth and final magnet module required to build the central solenoid stack has been delivered to the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) under construction in France, arriving at the French port of Fos-sur-Mer from the US earlier in September.
From the port, the ITER itinerary covers the special 104-kilometre transport route prepared so that very large, very heavy ITER components could move from the Mediterranean harbour to the ITER site in Saint-Paul-lez-Durance. Large-scale public works were carried out by France between 2008 and 2011 to widen roads, replace or reinforce bridges and modify intersections. Hundreds of components have travelled the route since the itinerary was declared open in 2013.
The convoy transporting the 110-tonne sixth magnet module covered some 30 kilometres during its last night of travel, following a trajectory from Meyrargues to ITER that included navigating the streets of several small villages, crossing the A51 motorway to bypass a tunnel, and finally passing through the ITER gates and climbing the steep incline of the heavy-duty track that leads to the ITER construction platform.
Currently, four of the six central solenoid modules are stacked and connected in the ITER Assembly Hall. The fifth module has passed site acceptance testing and is being prepared to be added to the stack; the sixth and final module will be placed atop the stack by year end. A spare module is also scheduled to arrive at the ITER site by the end of December.
US ITER staff oversaw the design and fabrication of the central solenoid, with the modules fabricated by General Atomics in Poway, California. More than a dozen US companies and organisations contributed to the superconducting magnet, its support structure and tooling. These included: ARMEC Corp (Tennessee); Climax (Oregon); Cryomagnetics (Tennessee); Hamill Manufacturing Co. (Pennsylvania); Kamatics Corporation (Connecticut); Keller Technology Corporation (New York); Major Tool and Machine (Indiana); National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (Florida); Petersen, Inc. (Utah); Precision Custom Components (Pennsylvania); Rhinestahl (Ohio); Robatel Technologies (Virginia); and Superbolt, (Pennsylvania).
The central solenoid is one of 13 essential hardware systems that the United States is contributing to ITER through the US ITER project, which is managed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory on behalf of the US Department of Energy Office of Science, with contributions from Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and Savannah River National Laboratory. Altogether, more than 600 companies across the United States have contributed to ITER hardware systems.
