Contracts for key Iter components
Toshiba will supply toroidal field coils for international Iter fusion project and Air Liquide will supply equipment for the machine's cooling under new contracts.Toshiba will supply toroidal field coils for international Iter fusion project and Air Liquide will supply equipment for the machine's cooling under new contracts.
.jpg "ITER and toroidal field coils 460 (JAEA)") |
| The Iter reactor and the toroidal field coils (Image: JAEA) |
Toshiba has concluded a contract with the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) to manufacture four of the 18 toroidal field coils for Iter, plus six containers to hold the coils. The coils will be manufactured at Keihin Product Operations and Toshiba IHI Power Systems, with work starting by the end of May. Delivery is scheduled to begin in 2017. The coils produce the strong magnetic fields needed to contain Iter's high-temperature plasma in which fusion will occur.
Meanwhile, French company Air Liquide is to supply cryogenic equipment for Iter's refrigeration system under a contract signed with Fusion for Energy (F4E), the organisation managing Europe's contribution to the project. The €65 million ($89 million) contract covers the engineering, procurement, installation and testing of a liquid nitrogen plant and auxiliary systems that will cool, process, store, transfer and recover the helium-based cryogenic liquids that will cool Iter's superconducting magnets to their operating temperature only 4.5°C above absolute zero.
The contract is the second awarded to Air Liquide by F4E for what the company describes as the largest centralised refrigeration system ever built. An earlier contract, signed in 2012, covered the supply of three helium refrigerators.
Air Liquide teams will jointly develop the equipment, which is to be installed and commissioned at the Iter site in southern France early in 2016.
Researched and written
by World Nuclear News
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