EU contribution to the procurement of blanket first wall and divertor components for ITER

Abstract

Fusion for Energy (F4E), the European Domestic Agency for ITER, is responsible for a significant share of the overall procurement of internal components inside the vacuum vessel, the largest ones being as follows: (1) 48% of the ITER blanket first wall (FW), (2) the divertor cassette bodies and (3) the divertor inner vertical target. Procurement strategies have been implemented by the In-Vessel Project Team at F4E aiming at mitigating technical and commercial risks for the procurement of these ITER internal components, promoting as far as possible competition among industrial partners. These procurement strategies have been supported by extensive research and development (R&D) work programmes, implemented over more than 15 years in Europe, to develop various fabrication technologies especially for plasma facing components. They include in particular the manufacture and testing of small-scale mock-ups, medium-scale mock-ups and full-scale prototypes of blanket FW panels and divertor inner vertical targets. In these R&D work programmes, significant efforts have been devoted to the development of reliable armour-to-heat sink materials joining techniques. More recently, full-scale prototypes of the divertor cassette body have also been fabricated.This paper presents the procurement strategies implemented by F4E for the supply of the European contribution to the procurement of the above ITER internal components, together with the main outcome of the R&D work programmes and the state of progress of the respective qualification programmes.