F4E hosts ITER divertor meeting

Representatives from Fusion for Energy, the Japanese and Russian Domestic Agencies (DAs), and ITER IO gathered together to share information and discuss the status of the divertor procurement, on-going R&D and future plans. This annual divertor meeting was hosted by F4E at its offices in Barcelona. Around 35 attendees were present at the three-day meeting which apart from including plenary sessions about the status of the work at ITER IO and in the DAs, also offered bilateral sessions for detailed technical discussions. Among others, topics such as the merging together of the divertor’s different components (divertor integration activities) and the specific issues regarding the tungsten material to be used in the divertor (armour design and tungsten performance) were discussed.

Located at the very bottom of the vacuum vessel, the ITER divertor is made up of 54 remotely-removable cassette bodies, each holding three plasma-facing components (namely, the inner and outer vertical targets and the dome). The technical design will enable the targets, in their lower part, to intercept the magnetic field lines, and therefore divert (thus the name ‘divertor’) the high particle flux coming from the plasma. F4E is responsible for providing the inner vertical target, the cassette bodies and the mounting of both types of targets and the dome on the cassette body. The Japanese and Russian Domestic Agencies are responsible for providing the outer vertical target and the dome respectively.

Full-size prototypes for the cassette bodies, the inner and outer vertical targets and the dome are currently being developed within all DAs and there have been some remarkable results in terms of thermal fatigue testing. Indeed, preliminary test results show that the divertor system will be able to sustain the thermal load it is expected to be exposed to when functioning in ITER.