Seven years to the day after the signature of the ITER Agreement at the Elysée Palace in Paris on 21 November 2006, the ITER Council concluded its Thirteenth Meeting. Senior representatives from the seven ITER Members had gathered in the fifth-floor Council Chamber for two days (20-21 November) to discuss Project progress under the chairmanship of Hideyuki Takatsu from Japan.

With the sixth full year of operation for the ITER Organization drawing to a close, it was reported that all major contracts for on-site civil works have been awarded. The manufacturing of key components is also progressing steadily within the ITER Member industries; in 2014 the first completed components will be shipped to the ITER site by the Members.

The Council responded to an internal, biennial independent assessment that urged changes in both Project management and governance. The Council agreed with the assessment's findings, which indicated that the Project faces challenges including schedule delays that need to be addressed immediately. To this effect, an action plan will be presented in mid-January and will be evaluated at an Extraordinary Meeting of the ITER Council in early February 2014.

Council also made two important technical decisions, approving ITER Organization proposals to commence operations with a full tungsten divertor and to include the in-vessel coils which will improve plasma stability, in the ITER Baseline.

China Coil Progress

On October 25, Chinese industry delivered the first poloidal field AC/DC converter bridge and external bypass to the Institute of Plasma Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (ASIPP), where it will be part of the test platform that mimics the site configuration at ITER.

China is responsible for the procurement of all 14 poloidal field converters that will provide controllable current/voltage to ITER's six poloidal field coils. The system is challenging to design and fabricate, in particular due to an unprecedented power level and short circuit current and a highly specific operation mode.

Research and development activities for the ITER in-vessel coils have been successfully completed at the Chinese Institute of Plasma Physics (ASIPP) and the manufacturing of two prototype coils - one equatorial Edge Localized Mode (ELM) coil and a 120° segment of a Vertical Stabilization (VS) coil - is underway. Unlike ITER's large superconducting magnet systems, the ELM and VS coils which make up the In-Vessel Coil (IVC) system will be located inside the ITER vacuum vessel. The complex shapes of the coils - large radius bends and a multiplicity of turns, bends and bumps for the VS coils and sharp radius bends for the ELM coils - make manufacturing particularly demanding. Innovative techniques are under development for the joining (brazing) of a large number of joints. The qualification of these techniques is one critical issue that remains to be resolved for the in-vessel coils.

The ITER Organization team is now preparing for the in-vessel coil Final Design Review scheduled for March 2014.

Blanket System Progress

The first of seven Procurement Arrangements for the blanket system were signed between the ITER Organization and the Chinese and Korean Domestic Agencies. China and Korea will share the procurement of the blanket shield blocks - the "backside" of the 440 blanket modules that support the plasma-facing first wall and provide neutron shielding for the vacuum vessel and coil systems. These thick steel blocks, weighing up to 4 tons a piece, also have to accommodate interfaces with other components and in particular a large number of diagnostic systems. For this reason there are a total of 28 major design variants and 150 or more minor design variants.

"The signatures were the culmination of several years of design and R&D effort on the part of the ITER Organization and the Domestic Agencies," says Rene Raffray, Blanket Section Leader. "Working together with the ITER Organization as part of the Blanket Integrated Product Team the procuring Domestic Agencies have been fully involved in the design since the start." The first phase of Procurement Arrangement execution will be the call for tender to be launched in China and Korea to manufacture the first shield block prototypes based on procurement specifications and 3D drawings/2D assembly drawings provided by ITER. "It has taken a lot of hard work, but it is rewarding and a credit to all those at ITER and in the Chinese and Korean Domestic Agencies who contributed to the achievement of these important milestones on time," says Raffray. "They are the latest in a list of on-time Blanket accomplishments that includes successfully going through the different system design reviews, and which have in great part been possible through active collaboration among the ITER Organization and the procuring Domestic Agencies."

Korean Superconducting Strand Progress At the end of November, Korea became the first Domestic Agency to complete the production of niobium-tin (Nb3Sn) strand for ITER's toroidal field conductors.

Nb3Sn strand is the basic building block of ITER's large magnets, the key element that makes them superconducting. Six Domestic Agencies (China, Europe, Japan, Korea, Russia and the US) are responsible for procuring over 400 tons of toroidal field conductor for ITER.

The Korean share of toroidal field strand procurement amounts to 93 tons (20 percent of toroidal field strands). The manufacturing contract was awarded to Kiswire Advanced Technology (KAT), which began producing in 2009. To have completed the manufacturing in four years is an impressive rate of production considering that, worldwide, the production of Nb3Sn strand before ITER did not exceed 15 tons per year.

"The toroidal field conductor Procurement Arrangement with Korea is a good example of an ITER success story," states Arnaud Devred, who is responsible for the Superconductor Systems & Auxiliaries at ITER. "The close collaboration of the Korean Domestic Agency and the ITER Organization to monitor execution enabled both parties to address production issues in a timely and effective manner. This milestone is all the more remarkable in that the strand supplier KAT was new to the business when the contract was launched, but managed to adapt to the world-class standards imposed by the Procurement Arrangement."

India Cooling System Progress

The head of the Indian Domestic Agency, Shishir P. Deshpande, has announced that the contract for the final design and procurement of ITER's Component Cooling Water, Chilled Water, and Heat Rejection systems has been awarded to the Indian company Larsen & Toubro (L&T) Ltd, the company also retained for the manufacture of the ITER cryostat. Together with the Tokamak Cooling Water System (procured by the US), the Component Cooling Water, Chilled Water and the Heat Rejection systems will remove the enormous amounts of heat generated by the tokamak and its auxiliary systems.

Other PA and MOU Arrangements

The ITER Organization recently concluded five Procurement Arrangements (PA) and one Memorandum of Understanding (MOU).

On Monday 2 December, a Procurement Arrangement was signed with the US Domestic Agency for the development of ITER's Pellet Injection System, which will fuel the plasma by firing frozen deuterium and tritium pellets. The Pellet Injection System is also capable of controlling the frequency of Edge Localized Modes (ELMs) by injecting smaller pellets of frozen deuterium at the edge of the plasma at high rates. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory, with a long history of success in the development of pellet injection systems for the JET tokamak (UK), TFTR (US), the DIII-D tokamak (US) and other fusion devices, will collaborate with US ITER. To meet the challenging requirements for the ITER Pellet Injection System, which far exceed those for any other system in operation, ORNL has launched an R&D program to develop an ITER-scale Pellet Injection System prototype incorporating all the key technologies necessary for the ITER system. A prototype test program using supercritical helium cooling from the Spallation Neutron Source at ORNL is planned as part of the Procurement Arrangement.

The Toroidal Field Coil Structure Procurement Arrangement was signed on Tuesday 3 December by three parties - the ITER Organization, the Japanese Domestic Agency and the European Domestic Agency. Each of ITER's 19 toroidal field magnets (18 for operation, plus one spare) is enclosed in a thick, "D" shaped steel structure called the toroidal field coil case. Procurement of the 19 coil cases is the responsibility of Japan; however, as part of the agreement to site the ITER Project in Europe, ten of the coil cases will be paid for by Europe.

And finally, three Procurement Arrangements dedicated to ITER's electrical power distribution systems were signed on 3 December with the European Domestic Agency: Steady State Electrical Network (SSEN) and Pulsed Power Electrical Network (PPEN) Installation; Emergency Power Supply; and the manufacturing and delivery of SSEN Components.

A Memorandum of Understanding was also concluded for the common manufacture of ITER's 44 port plugs. Japan was the second Domestic Agency to sign the Memorandum following the signature of India in July. The objective is to have the ITER Domestic Agencies involved in port plug procurement contract with one single manufacturer, in order to benefit from the advantage of having one standard for design, quality assurance, and qualification and manufacturing methods.

For more on ITER, visit http://iter.org

Also see presentations of ITER Director General Osamu Motojima http://fire.pppl.gov/FPA13_motojima_ITERr.pdf and US ITER Project Office Director Ned Sauthoff http://fire.pppl.gov/FPA13_Sauthoff_USITER.pdf at Fusion Power Associates 34th Annual Meeting and Symposium.