The first half of a second upending tool, required to speed up the assembly of the sector modules, has been delivered to the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) under construction at Cadarache in France with the second half expected shortly.
An upending tool is designed to handle some of the largest ITER components such as vacuum vessel sectors and toroidal field coils. As a consequence, its steel frame is quite cumbersome and can only be delivered in two halves that are later bolted together.
This second upending tool, manufactured under tight time constraints by Korean company Yujin Mechatronics is similar to the first one but more versatile.
As the handling of vacuum vessel sectors and toroidal field coils requires different sets of attachments, the original upending tool, in use at ITER for the past five years, needed to be reconfigured for every operation. With two units soon available, each one will be “specialised” in one type of component. Lengthy reconfiguration operations will no longer be needed, and time in the range of weeks, will be saved in the assembly process schedule.
