What’s so critical about ITER’s critical network?

You may have seen ITER’s impressive 42-hectare platform in one of the aerial view images that we have released in the past. We fly high and above in order to capture the activity carried out on this piece of land that is 1 km long, 400 m wide and compares in size to 60 soccer fields.

This time, however, we decided to touch ground and go deep in order to give you another view of the work in progress. If you want to build you have to dig and that’s what we decided to capture in this month’s clip: ITER’s critical network.

We met with Ben Slee, the Deputy Manager of the “Sites, Buildings and Power supplies” Division to find out more about the nature of the works. First, we asked him why these networks are called critical. It’s all linked to time, schedule and the need to get them right before any infrastructure is in place. The network consists of the rainwater collection system, which has a length of 1.2 km and a diameter between 1 and 2.2 metres. We also spoke to Fabien Sappa, construction supervisor of the Engage consortium, responsible for the Architect Engineer contract, who explained that the pipes go 15 metres deep and the heaviest element is 12 tonnes. He outlined the three stages of the work and highlighted the challenge of doing all the work manually.

To watch the clip click here and if you would like to download the latest pictures documenting the progress of the ITER site visit the our image library.