The EDIPO facility is getting ready to test the ITER superconductors.

It all started back in 2006 when the European DIPOle project (EDIPO) was launched in order to manufacture a high field magnet that would ultimately be used to test ITER cable-in-conduit conductors and superconductors with a current of up to 100 kA. The contract was awarded to BNG (Babcock-Noell) for a total cost of approximately 2 million EUR and once the magnet was successfully manufactured and tested, it would be transferred to a Swiss facility named after the project. On the morning of 13 May, a lorry transporting the EDIPO coil all the way from Germany arrived in Switzerland and with the help of a 60 tonne crane unloaded it at the laboratory of the Centre of Research in Physics and Plasma (CRPP) hosted by the Paul Scherrer Institute in Villigen.

The EDIPO facility is planned to operate in parallel with the SULTAN facility and will produce a magnetic field of 12.5 Tesla in order to meet the 13 Tesla required for ITER. The major components of the facility (vacuum vessel, power supplies, HTS leads) have all been delivered and assembled. The outer cylinder contains the 2 saddle-shaped superconducting magnets and is made of a 35 mm thick, 1200 mm inner diameter stainless steel tube. The bore that within which the cable-in-conduit conductors will be inserted in order to be tested is 3 metres long and the total assembly weighs 20 tonnes. It is expected that by early next year the facility will operate with a current of 17 kA at temperatures of 4.5 Kelvin.

For Alfredo Portone, designated project officer on behalf of F4E for the EDIPO project, this is an important milestone for two main reasons: “Firstly, a new European fusion test facility has been unveiled to cope with the R&D advances we have made and secondly, it will become the test environment of the ITER conductors before they are assembled on the machine”.