More civil engineering works, buildings and infrastructure

Today, more than 1 100 people are working on the ITER construction site. Nearly 500 are working on the site, building the infrastructure that will host the biggest fusion device and the remaining 600 are F4E contractors, engineers and experts in computer-aided designs (CAD). To help you catch up with the progress made, we visited the site and identified the main developments.

The Diagnostics building, will house the equipment that will measure different parameters acting as the eyes and ears of the machine. Currently the Vinci Ferrovial Razel (VFR) consortium is pouring the last lot of concrete for the internal walls of the second basemat. In the meantime, the horizontal formwork, the installation of the embedded plates and the reinforcement works of the slab, between the first and second basement of the building, are on-going. The concrete will be poured in three lots covering different sections of the building: the central (which is going to be poured first), the north and the south part. The whole team is striving to complete this task before the end of the year.

The ITER Cryoplant, whose surface is over 5 600 m2, will be the biggest in Europe and its construction is advancing quickly. Two buildings have already started to take shape. One of the buildings will provide the gas flow to cool down or warm up the Tokamak and the other will provide the helium liquid and gas flow to cool down the machine. The excavations works of these buildings started in July this year and are nearly finished. Blinding concrete has been poured in several parts of the buildings and the reinforcement works of the basement walls is on-going. The pouring of the concrete for the first walls is expected in November this year.

Another important building is becoming more visible on the ITER site. The Site Services building required a great deal of underground work for its foundations and the gallery underneath since early 2015, and it is now emerging from the ground. Its slab was poured in September 2015 and the works for the walls are currently on-going. It is located in the east side of the Assembly Hall and will provide nitrogen, compressed air, cold water and demineralised water. The objective is to get it weather tight by the end of November and ready for the installation of services in April 2016.

Apart from the buildings, the technical galleries have also been advancing. They will be distributing power to all of the south part of the worksite (Cryoplant, Cleaning Facility, Assembly Hall, etc.). Starting on the west side of the construction site, these galleries will pass between the Poloidal Field coils and the Cryoplant buildings, and will spread like a spider’s web under the worksite. Getting the sequence of the different building interfaces right is perhaps the biggest challenge in this field of works.