US Ambassador to France Charles H. Rivkin, who visited the ITER site recently, can be listed among the people whose work has made a decisive impact on American popular culture. As head of The Jim Henson Company for 15 years, he produced such iconic TV programs as "The Muppet Show". The Ambassador came to ITER accompanied by the US Consul General in Marseille, Diane Kelly. He confided that he had long heard "rumours about a secret project in southern France." As he was shown the platform and the ongoing construction work, the Ambassador was glad to note that there was nothing "secret" about the ITER project. "I'm very impressed by the science, the technology and the international cooperation at work within ITER," he said. "I'm happy that industrial-scale fusion will be available for our children and grandchildren."

Consul General Kelly, who took her position on March 17, admits she was a bit uninformed about "thermonuclear fusion". However, after a briefing in Washington and a visit to the site, she came to the conclusion that the idea behind ITER was "brilliant."

Procurement Arrangements Signed

Recently, at the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow, ITER Director-General Osamu Motojima and the Head of the Russian Domestic Agency, Anatoly Krasilnikov, signed the Procurement Arrangement for Poloidal Field Coil (PF) 1. ITER's PF system consists of six horizontal coils. Coils 2-6 will be procured by Europe in a dedicated 250 metre-long coil winding facility on the ITER site in Cadarache. Coil 1— the smallest of the PF coils, although it weighs a full 139 tons—will be manufactured in Russia under the leadership of the Efremov Institute in St. Petersburg and delivered to Cadarache by boat.

A second Procurement Arrangement signed in Moscow with the Russian Domestic Agency was for the Fast Discharge Units, Switching Networks, and the High-Current, Water-Cooled Busbars. The Fast Discharge Units (FDU) are used to protect ITER's superconducting coils in case of a quench. To allay the consequences of such an event, large resistor banks are inserted in the circuits to dissipate the energy stored in the coils that can reach values up to 50 GJ. The Switching Networks (SN) are used at every pulse for plasma initiation in each of the Central Solenoid coil packs, and in the circuits of the PF Coils 1 and 6. The High-Current, Water-Cooled Busbars connect the AC/DC power converters to the SN, the FDU and finally to the superconducting coils. The total length of the Busbars on ITER will be 10 km for the 21 power supply circuits.

Director-General Motojima also signed a Procurement Arrangement for 8 of the 18 High Voltage Power Supplies for ITER's powerful Radio Frequency Heating system procured by India. Several heating methods will work concurrently to bring the plasma in the core of the machine to 150 million°C. One of these heating methods is the Ion Cyclotron Heating (ICH) and Current Drive system that will inject a total of 20 MW of Radio-Frequency (RF) power to the ITER plasma. The power is generated by nine RF sources similar to standard RF transmitters with 2.5 to 3 MW output powers at a frequency ranging from 35 MHz to 65 MHz. The DC electrical power for the 9 RF sources will be provided by 18 High Voltage Power Supply units (AC/DC converters), each delivering 190A, 27kV and 3MW.

In addition, ITER Director-General Osamu Motojima and the Head of the Korean Domestic Agency, Kijung Jung, signed a Procurement Arrangement for the AC/DC converters feeding ITER's magnetic coils. The components supplied by Korea will play an essential role to the plasma initiation, ohmic heating, plasma control, and for the full integration of the entire Coil Power Supply System (CPSS). The ITER CPSS will likely be the world's largest high current power conversion plant (~2GVA) with the innovative technology and challenges that many of them will be the pioneer applications on ITER project.

Korea is contributing 37.3 percent of this procurement; 62.7 percent will be procured by China. "For us this is a big step forward," Kijung Jung said after the signing. "Korea has now committed about 83 percent of its in-kind contributions to ITER." In manufacturing the powerful converters, ITER Korea will build on its experience gained in developing the converter systems for the Korean KSTAR Tokamak.

A Procurement Arrangement was signed with the U.S. ITER Domestic Agency for the vacuum auxiliary systems. "This is the first Procurement Arrangement for the Vacuum Section," said Robert Pearce, Section Leader for Vacuum, "and we are very pleased to have accomplished the signature on schedule. This achievement comes as a result of hard work and the excellent collaboration between IO and US vacuum teams." The vacuum auxiliary systems are part of the early delivery items for the ITER Tokamak. A 15 kilometre-long network of stainless steel vacuum lines will be responsible in ITER for the transport of exhaust from the vacuum vessel, cryostat and other systems to the Tritium Plant for cleaning and reprocessing. This is one of the largest distribution systems of the ITER Tokamak, and one of the first to be installed during assembly. Its installation is scheduled to start at the end of 2013 as soon as the buildings are available.

A Procurement Arrangement was signed with China for ITER’s AC/DC convertors and Reactive Power Compensator and Harmaonic filtering. The Chinese Domestic Agency (DA) will p;rocure all fourteen PF converters that will provide controllable current/voltage to ITER's six Poloidal Field coils. The procurement package includes the design, fabrication, delivery, installation, assembly, integration and site acceptance test of the converter units. It is a very challenging system due to unprecedented power level and short circuit current, and the high dynamic demanding from the need of the plasma control. The Chinese DA will also procure the ITER's Reactive Power Compensator and Harmonic Filtering System rated at 750Mvar to stabilize the power grid and to provide required quality of the electrical power to operate ITER. It is a unique system due to the installed power, the extreme high demands on the response time and the expected loads.

Kiswire Advanced Technology (KAT) located in Daejeon, Korea, recently completed the production of 28 tons of niobium-tin (Nb3Sn) wire for ITER's Toroidal Field (TF) magnets. This puts an end to the first stage of TF strand procurement in Korea, which in total amounts to 93 tons. The second stage (30 tons) and the third stage (35 tons) are expected to be completed in 2013.

For more information on ITER progress, visit http://www.iter.org and click on ITER Newsline.