How is Europe manufacturing the ITER Toroidal Field coils?

Technician lifting a Double Pancake to position it on another station, ASG Superconductors, La Spezia (Italy) © Andrea Botto

The ITER burning plasma is expected to reach 150 million °C. How are we going to confine it?

18 powerful superconducting magnets, known as Toroidal Field coils, will be powered with 68 000 A to generate a magnetic field of 11.8 Tesla (approximately 1 million times stronger the magnetic fields of the Earth!). In this “cage” we will entrap the energy of a small sun.

Europe will manufacture ten of the TF coils and Japan will produce eight plus one spare. They will be the biggest Niobium-tin (Nb3Sn) magnets ever produced. More than 600 people from 26 companies have collaborated with F4E, managing the European contribution to ITER, to produce the ten TF coils.

F4E has visited the premises of ASG Superconductors, where the core components of the TF coils are manufactured. For the first time-ever, we get to see the main fabrication steps and to meet the people behind the key operations.

Alessandro Bonito-Oliva, F4E Magnets Project Manager; Robert Harrison, F4E Technical Officer; Marc Cornelis, F4E Technical Officer, offer us a guided tour and explain how we have succeeded in manufacturing the most high-tech magnets in history!

View the clip click here

Click here to download the 3D ITER TF coils poster

martial

Recent Posts

Cryopanels completed for the MITICA cryopump

Manufacturing the “sponges” that will create vacuum by absorbing gas particles.

1 week ago

How to join the pieces of ITER components

Virtual fitting offers optimal positions to weld the segments of vacuum vessel sectors.

2 weeks ago

LIPAc accelerator prepares for beam operation

New central control room installed to operate the system.

2 weeks ago

How will research infrastructures deal with logistics in future?

Join us at the RI.Logistica conference. Registrations are open.

3 weeks ago

F4E Smartglasses for remote inspections

A new way to follow the manufacturing progress without always travelling to the premises of…

3 weeks ago

ITER’s sixth Poloidal Field coil inserted in the Tokamak pit.

Landmark achievement for magnet manufactured by Europe and China.

4 weeks ago