ITER project

The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project, located in Cadarache, north of Aix-en-Provence in France, is designed to demonstrate the scientific and technical feasibility of fusion energy (the creation of energy by fusing two atoms). The main building will house the world’s largest Tokamak reactor, a cylinder 28 metres in diameter and 29 metres high, weighing no less than 23,000 tonnes. Along with two adjoining ancillary buildings, the complex as a whole will be a reinforced concrete structure measuring 120 metres long, 80 metres wide, and 80 metres high. Other structures include an assembly building, a two-storey building, and various industrial buildings. The project also calls for large-scale nuclear doors (measuring 4 metres by 4 metres and weighing 40 tonnes) that are resistant to radiation and excessive pressure.

BACKGROUND

Will we develop an inexhaustible energy source one day? That is the question that is uppermost in the minds of researchers on the ITER project. To answer that question, people from all over the world are working together. Participants from Europe, China, South Korea, India, Japan, Russia, and the United States are studying the possibility of controlling fusion energy, which is what powers the stars, and have joined forces to develop an experimental reactor. Their project is designed to demonstrate that the fusion of two types of hydrogen (deuterium and tritium) in a Tokamak reactor (which confines particles by combining two magnetic fields) may become a usable energy source and produce electricity. From this starting point, ITER aims to produce ten times more energy than is needed to trigger the nuclear fusion reaction. So, for 50 megawatts of electricity consumed, it will generate 500 MW in heat energy.

TECHNICAL OVERVIEW

In efforts to provide the project with all the infrastructure it requires, the future complex will weigh 360,000 tonnes, including 23,000 tonnes for the Tokamak reactor. At 80 metres high, 80 metres wide, and 120 metres long, the complex includes three buildings: one for the Tokamak reactor; another for the diagnostics and management systems; and a tritium facility for the production of plasma to fuel the reactor. Some 16,000 tonnes of steel reinforcement, 150,000 m³ of concrete, and 7,500 tonnes of metal were used to create all of the required structures.
For this project, we have excavated a seismic isolation pit 126 metres long, 86 metres wide, and 15 metres deep. The pit is designed to allow the construction of the first foundation slab and retaining walls. On the foundation slab, 493 concrete piles have been placed. Each pile is topped by a seismic pad enabling the pile to absorb lateral motion of up to 10 centimetres and thereby minimise ground movement in the event of an earthquake. Atop the pads, a second foundation slab was built as a kind of floor of the Tokamak complex.
Once work on the foundation slabs was completed, we turned our attention to building the lower walls and initial elevations.
Once these civil engineering operations are completed, the final stage will be to assemble the machinery, which will include a million high-tech components from all over the world.

This huge and extremely complex civil engineering project for the future ITER nuclear fusion reactor has mobilised the expertise of a dozen VINCI companies, from earthquake-resistant foundation work and project management to concrete engineering and the mechanics of outsized doors.

IMPACT

The program was designed to demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of nuclear fusion energy. Fusion research aims to develop a safe, inexhaustible, and environmentally friendly energy source. ITER is Latin for “path” or “way” and represents the hope that, through science and technology, we can develop an unlimited source of energy. For Geneviève Fioraso (French minister for higher education and research), this project is a permanent challenge whose objective is to provide “everyone with electricity by the year 2050.”
This project also stands out as a technical feat and the largest experimental fusion facility ever designed.
Beyond its scientific and technology aims, this initiative has direct and indirect impacts on the region of Cadarache. Over a ten-year period, the construction project will generate as many as 3,000 indirect jobs; in addition, the twenty-year operating period will generate 3,250 indirect jobs (three-quarters of which in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region).
ITER is an opportunity for VINCI Construction Grands Projets to strengthen its positioning in the nuclear vanguard.

Project participants

Client
F4E (Fusion for Energy)

Project management
ENGAGE (EGIS, Atkins, Assystem, Empresarios Agrupados)

Key figures

Implementation dates
May 2013 to 2021

Weight of the Tokamak reactor
23,000 t

Concrete
150,000 m³

Testimonial

“Construction of the ITER experimental nuclear fusion reactor in Cadarache in the south of France is one of the world’s most ambitious projects, if not the most ambitious in terms of international cooperation.”

José Manuel Barroso, PRESIDENT OF THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION

Find out more

www.iter.org

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