Europe delivers remote handling flanges and in-vessel ancillary equipment

The ITER plasma is expected to reach temperatures as high as 150 million °C.  Some of the components inside the vacuum vessel, housing the fusion reaction, will be more exposed to these extreme conditions than others. The divertor is one of them, also known as a “plasma facing component”, because it will receive some of that blazing heat on its surface.

Located in the lower part of the machine, the divertor counts with 54 units known as cassette bodies, forming a massive tray of roughly 142 m² where all impurities fall. Each cassette measures 0.8 x 2.3 x 3.5 m and weighs roughly 8 t with all components installed. With the help of remote handling, the cassettes will be maintained, repaired or replaced due to the fact that human operators will not be allowed to access the vacuum vessel.

Attached to these bulky components are smaller ancillary parts which are essential for the overall operation. F4E and Walter Tosto have successfully completed the fabrication of the transition pieces, remote handling flanges, and supplied raw material, which have been delivered to ITER. These small pieces need to comply with extremely stringent tolerances. Their size and location in the device leaves no room for imperfection especially because it will not be easy replacing them. These flanges and the transition pieces will connect the cassette with the vacuum vessel’s heat transfer system so that pressurised water runs through them to cool down these components exposed to the super-hot plasma. The two pieces will be joined together with a remote handling welding tooling at a later stage, when the components reach the stage of installation.

The contract for the production of 120 transition pieces and 130 remote handling flanges was signed between F4E and Walter Tosto in August 2020. Four years later, the production of all pieces has been completed with all parts delivered to the ITER site in November 2024. “We are pleased to announce that the last delivery has reached the ITER site. The production of these components was complex due to the high tolerances and the specific materials we had to use. The good collaboration between F4E, Walter Tosto and ITER Organization was crucial in completing this task successfully ahead of time,” stated Montse Felip Hernando, F4E’s In-Vessel Technical Project Officer responsible for this contract.