R.H. divertor maintenance – the divertor refurbishment platform

Abstract

The ITER divertor assembly consists in 60 cassettes located in the bottom region of the vacuum vessel. Because of erosion and damage during, reactor operations, their replacement is expected to be required eight times during the machine lifetime. The cassettes will be withdrawn from the vessel through dedicated ducts and they will be transported to a hot cell for refurbishment. The divertor refurbishment platform (DRP) simulates the arrangement in the divertor hot cell for cassette inspection, component replacement and repair, measuring, and testing. The DRP had to demonstrate the feasibility of divertor cassette refurbishment, procedures, and the use of conventional remote handling equipment in a hot cell, for the refurbishment of high heat flux components (also called plasma facing components PFC), cassette locking systems, water feeds and post-repair, integrity testing. The true environmental conditions (temperature, atmosphere, radiation, contamination) have not been replicated in the DRP, but they were taken into account in the development of the mock ups, the remote handling equipment, and the operating procedures. The results permit to validate the hot cell operations for the cassette refurbishment and to specify the hot cell requirements. This paper describes the objectives, lay-out, test programme, test results, and future activities of the divertor refurbishment platform.