The wait is over. On Tuesday 9 August at 5:00 am there was an unusual amount of activity on the ITER platform. There was noise coming from the concrete pumps, trucks were crossing the site in many directions and the contractors together with the F4E team were all dressed up in their uniforms ready to witness a turning point in the history of the ITER construction: 800m3 of concrete were going to be poured in the Tokamak complex to form part of the basemat!
Two pumps were placed at the top of the Tokamak pit and for approximately ten hours concrete was being poured and levelled. This exercise will be repeated 21 times in order to cover the entire surface of the Tokamak pit which is 110 metres long and 80 metres wide, the equivalent to the footprint of a football stadium. The Tokamak pit will host the Diagnostics, Tokamak, and Tritium buildings.
It is calculated that a total of 110,000m3 of concrete will be used for the construction of the entire Tokamak complex, which measures up to the concrete used for 3,000 houses of 120m2.
This autumn the construction activity will focus on the basemat, the plinths for the anti-seismic pads and the retaining walls.
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