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Began manufacturing key components of ITER
Bashny.Net
ITER ITER - a small copy of the Sun i>
After years of delays finally началась work on assembling the key components ITER - toroidal field coils.
Some of the major components of a fusion reactor makes contractor CNIM. He was engaged in shipbuilding, before switching to precision engineering. The location of the plant in La Seyne-sur-Mer in the suburb of Toulon (France) on the coast is an advantage, because some of the components are so cumbersome that they can only be transported by sea.
One of the shops giant drill pierces channels in the D-shaped steel loops of about 20 meters. They are made of high tensile steel, so that carbide drills must be changed every 8 minutes.
Seven such loops attached to each other to form one of many magnets, controlling the plasma at a temperature of 10 million ° C in a vacuum chamber.
The scheme ITER: the dimensions of the reactor ~ 40 x 40 meters; 1 - the central solenoid (inductor); 2 - poloidal field coils; 3 - a toroidal magnetic field coil; 4 - vacuum chamber; 5 - cryostat; 6 - divertor i>
Hereafter - Illustrations from the official booklet «ITER» Corporation "Rosatom" sup>
However, this is still far away. First you need to forward loop to the plant in the city of La Spezia in northern Italy, where another contractor will implement up to 700 meters of superconducting cable in each of them. Then they were transported to Venice, there is another firm Simic complete assembly ready toroidal field coils. Each coil will weigh like a fully loaded aircraft "747". Simic company engaged in the production and other loops, so they have to make a round trip to La Spezia and back. Guide ITER originally chose this strategy when contractors compete for contracts, and the different parts of one node can sometimes produce different continents.
Finished coils are transported to the French port, where 800 tons loaded onto 352-wheeled transporter. He slowly pulls the goods to the place of construction of ITER in 104 km from the coast. If all goes according to plan, the first coil will deliver the place of a future fusion reactor in three years.
And this is only a tiny part of the work that remains to be done before you start the ITER.
Refers to the ITER fusion reactor of the type "tokamak" - setting the toroidal magnetic confinement of plasma in order to achieve the necessary conditions for the occurrence of controlled thermonuclear fusion. In the vacuum chamber of deuterium and tritium nuclei fuse to form helium nuclei (alpha particles) and high-energy neutron. Tokamak plasma chamber walls is not maintained, and the combined magnetic field - the external toroidal and poloidal field current.
In an ambitious international project involves Russia, the US, the EU, China and other countries. Fusion reactor proposed by Soviet physicists in 1985, was agreed at the meeting of Presidents Reagan and Gorbachev. Since then, there was a preparation and design, in 2001 prepared a technical project, and in 2005, the participating countries have decided on the construction site - destinations of Cadarache in southern France.
ITER - the most complex technical structure in the history of mankind. The basic structure consists of 10 million parts. This is more than in the Large Hadron Collider. Engineers call it "the puzzle of 10 million units." Not surprisingly, the preparation took so long.
Golf ITER i>
At least progress in the manufacture of the toroidal field coils seems more significant than in the manufacture of other key components - the poloidal field coils. For their production built a special building that until almost empty, except for a few boxes and hanging from the roof of the circular crane: с 2012 almost nothing has changed.
Unfortunately, the deadline for the first run of the plasma working recently moved again. Project Director calls in 2023, independent experts are inclined to 2025. After the trial run will follow approximately four years of testing before the camera downloaded this mixture of deuterium and tritium. The task of ITER - demonstrate controlled fusion reaction with fusion power of several hundred megawatts and development of the technology of its practical use. Thereafter, one can construct the same settings throughout the world.
In the first stage reactor will operate in pulsed mode at a power of thermonuclear reactions 400-500 MW and a pulse duration of about 400 s. The second stage will be practiced continuous operation of the reactor, and the tritium breeding system.
Scientists are unanimous in the opinion that for the fusion - the future of energy. Stocks of deuterium in the water of the oceans are inexhaustible, the lithium content in the earth's crust is 200 times greater than uranium (tritium from lithium produced directly on ITER). There are other advantages: radiation biological hazards of fusion reactors is about a thousand times lower than fission reactors; possibility of placing the reactor in any place; lack of "heavy" radioactive waste, which can be used to make "dirty" bombs; physical impossibility of dispersal ("explosion") reactor.
Source: habrahabr.ru/post/223857/
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