Hoisting of the 1,250-ton dewar-structured base of an artificial sun fusion reactor of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) organization was completed on May 28 in France.
The completion signified the beginning of the installation of the ITER's main facility.
Contracted by a Sino-French consortium led by China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC), the hoisting project set records in weight and installation accuracy in China's nuclear power industry.
The consortium and the ITER organization reached agreement on the TAC1 project to install the most important core facility of the ITER's tokamak device in September 2019. The TAC1 project is to the artificial sun what a reactor is to a nuclear island.
The dewar base is the first major component and the foundation of the tokamak device pressure vessel. In addition to the base installation, the consortium is also responsible for system installation that connects the vacuum vessels.
The project was a result of China Nuclear Industry 23 Construction Co., Ltd.'s rich installation experience and nuclear fusion technologies developed by the Southwestern Institute of Physics and the Institute of Plasma Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The artificial sun project, also known as a controllable nuclear fusion facility, is a longed-for goal of global nuclear fusion researchers.
ITER is an international major scientific engineering program with a scale second only to the international space station program.
As the largest fusion reactor experiment project, ITER has a more complicated structure and more difficult technologies compared to the fusion reactors currently in operation, which means that there is no mature experience to be relied upon.
Jointly built by seven parties – China, the European Union, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the United States, it will play a role in the peaceful use of nuclear fusion power in the future.
The hoisting of the dewar-structured base of ITER's artificial sun fusion reactor is completed on May 28. [Photo/sasac.gov.cn]
(Executive editor: Wang Ruoting)
