ITER Divertor

The Boeing Company is leading the US ITER Industrial Team to design, analyze, and perform research and development on the ITER divertor cassette and plasma facing components (PFCs). The customers are Sandia National Laboratory, the US divertor and PFC Home Team Leader, and the ITER In-Vessel Joint Central Team (JCT) in Garching, Germany. The following chart shows the participants and their working relationships.

Dan Driemeyer, is the Manager for the Boeing Divertor program and is providing the leadership for the industrial team joint effort.

The function of the ITER divertor is to handle the plasma power exhaust, remove the plasma particles (especially the helium by-product), and provide a means of impurity control. In ITER, a single null divertor will be installed in the bottom part of the vacuum chamber. It will be built form modules, remotely replaceable in the shortest possible time. It will provide a structure capable of different divertor geometries, consistent with all stages of all operational scenarios required to fulfill the physics and technology missions. Shown below is a drawing of the divertor region.

To turn this engineering sketch into workable and buildable hardware, the ITER JCT assigned teams all around the world specific tasks aimed at the fabrication of the prototype divertor cassette that can be tested in realistic plasma conditions.

The tasks are well under way and the results are being used to help define the full-scale cassette engineering prototype, Task 232. The major prototype task objectives are listed below:

• Build full-size components and assess manufacturing scale-up issues including the procurement of large sections of suitable material
• Test full-size components and identify design modifications to improve performance and manufacturability
• Demonstrate the feasibility of remote exchange of irradiated PFC's on a cassette
• Develop NDE techniques suitable for full-size components.
• Assess feasibility of NDE in place of thermal load testing of all PFC's
• Provide input necessary for producing divertor component procurement specifications
• Assess reliability of divertor components and identify areas where further development is necessary
• Refine divertor cost estimates and identify more cost-effective manufacturing methods
• Assess manufacturing time scales
• Demonstrate co-operation of the four parties and the JCT in component production and testing on an engineering scale relevant to ITER and within an acceptable schedule

An engineering design for the prototype ITER divertor cassette has been developed with support and hardware being provided by the four ITER parties: United States, European Union, Japan, and Russian Federation. A 3-D engineering drawing illustrates the general configuration of the cassette and the hardware responsibilities. A exploded view of the cassette is also available for viewing.

High Energy Systems