The Vacuum Vessel Sector Project (L- 3)

The full scale sector was manufactured for the Japanese Home Team by Hitachi and Toshiba which built half sector each.
The distributed manufacturing offers opportunities to test and compare different candidate weld schemes.
In parallel, the Russian Home Team manufactured a full scale model of the equatorial port extension.
The US Home Team developed a fully remotized welding/cutting system to integrate the port extension in the sector model.
The full-scale sector model and port extension, which have been fabricated and tested, have been providing critical information related to the fabrication and assembly technologies required to produce a high quality sector, and the magnitude of welding distortions, dimensional accuracy and achievable tolerances during sector fabrication and field assembly. Also, the basic feasibility of the remote welding, the cutting and the NDT system have been demonstrated.

Figure 1:View of the ITER full-scale vacuum
vessel sector A [courtesy of JAERI, JAPAN]

Figure 2:Remote welding/cutting tool tested with full-scale
partial mockup of vacuum vessel [courtesy of US Home Team]