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 The Vessel / In-Vessel FieldTask areas: Plasma Facing Components, Blanket and Vacuum Vessel, Assembly and Maintenance This field is concerned with the nuclear core of the machine. The objective is to support the ITER design through R&D activities aiming at gathering the necessary know-how in both manufacturing techniques and procedures. This is being achieved through the production of relevant mock-ups and their testing under conditions approaching the real ITER ones as far as possible. Prototypes have been manufactured and tested and full-scale facilities (in the case of remote handling) have been assembled and operated. Major design contributions have been made by the European Associations and industry in collaboration with the ITER Joint Central Team. This field covers the following areas: Plasma Facing Components (i.e. divertor, baffle and limiter)An extensive R&D programme was carried out during the ITER EDA period to develop suitable technologies for all high heat flux components. These activities culminated with the manufacturing of medium and full-scale prototypes. The work now concentrates on the divertor area with the following main activities:
Figure 1:Mock-ups and material samples neutron-irradiated
Blanket and Vacuum Vessel (i.e. primary first wall modules,shielding blanket, vacuum vessel)Already in the early EDA, the solid HIP process for joining beryllium tiles to a DS-Cu heat sink was successfully demonstrated. On that basis, a series of primary first wall mock-ups and a prototype panel have been manufactured by Industry. New efforts have been started in 1998 to establish the adequate HIP joining conditions for the beryllium and CuCrZr material combination. 
Figure 2:Shielding blanket Module The smaller size of new ITER primary first wall panels compared with the 1998 ITER integrated first wall and the absence of double-curved surfaces re-opened the prospects for joining the beryllium tiles by brazing instead of HIPping. The feasibility of this alternative was meanwhile demonstrated by European Industry by manufacturing a prototype panel with DS-Cu as heat sink material and CuInNiSn as the braze alloy. Corresponding efforts for panels with CuCrZr heat sink are underway. A shield block with an embedded array of coolant channels can be manufactured from a forged block of steel, by drilling the channels from the surfaces as required, and closing them at the surfaces by plug welding. This method is well established, but raises concerns about the risk of water leakage and the cost. With HIP of stainless steel powder, the European Industry has therefore developed an alternative fabrication route, which avoids welds as the primary coolant barrier. The manufacturing method selected by the EU for the fabrication of the shielding blanket has been confirmed by the construction of a prototype. Welding tests aimed at the vacuum vessel structures have also been performed demonstrating the possibility to reduce distortions and increase precision. Assembly and Maintenance
Figure 3:Plan view of the DTP facility This area represents a crucial field of activity in view of assuring the availability of an experiment which will not allow, already during the D-D operation phase, any human intervention inside the vacuum chamber. A large deal of research in this area has been based on the experience gathered at JET. Great attention is being dedicated to this area also under the auspices of the Power Plant Conceptual Study through extensive interactions with industry. The two facilities, the Divertor Test Platform (DTP) and the Divertor Refurbishment Platform (DRP), assembled at ENEA Brasimone, are an excellent example of the enormous effort of integration in the framework of ITER EDA. Suppliers of components of the DTP and of the DRP include a number of companies in Europe, Japan and Canada. |