Three years after the delivery of the first radial plate, the teams from CNIM and its partners were on hand on 23 May 2017 to see the last plate dispatched for Italy. These massive steel rings form the skeleton of the 18 toroidal field coils required to confine the plasma within the ITER vacuum. As partners in the ITER project since 2007, CNIM and its Italian partner SIMIC have manufactured 35 of the 70 radial plates which will form the heart of the ITER.
The last plate was loaded onto MV STAPELMOOR bound for La Spezia in Italy, where it will be fitted into the toroidal coil, a giant magnet used to generate the intense magnetic field required for the functioning of the ITER.
The processes implemented for the series manufacture of the radial plates – electron beam welding in a local vacuum and local machining – were developed as part of an internal R&D program, then under a specific contract with F4E, between 2009 and September 2012.
The project has represented 300,000 hours’ work for CNIM, carried out by some sixty employees.