On the ITER platform, work is progressing on the foundations of the plant building while following successive design phases, the procurement of cryoplant components is now underway by Europe (liquid nitrogen plant and auxiliary systems), the ITER Organization (helium plant) and India (cryolines and cryodistribution components).
As part of Europe’s procurement package, a 23-metre-long stainless steel storage tank for liquid helium successfully passed the leak detection tests recently. Responsible for keeping liquid helium at a steady -269 °C, the stainless-steel inner tank of the ITER Cryoplant has multi-layer insulation to minimize thermal losses and will be assembled with exterior thermal shielding.
The examination of 500 metres of linear welds was successfully performed by the manufacturer, opening the way to the delivery of the equipment at ITER, before the end of the year. The storage tank was manufactured by CryoAB (Sweden) as part of the contract signed between the European Domestic Agency and Air Liquide Global and EC Solutions and Fusion for Energy.
