Harnessing nuclear fusion for sustainable energy - TCE for ITER
Harnessing nuclear fusion for sustainable energy – TCE for ITER

Sectors

Power

ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) is an international fusion reactor which is being constructed under the collaborative efforts of seven participating countries including India. The intergovernmental organization was established by an international agreement signed in 2006 in a ceremony hosted by French President Jacques Chirac and the President of the European Commission M. José Manuel Durao Barroso. The Parties to the ITER Agreement (the ITER Members) are the People's Republic of China; the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom); the Republic of India; Japan; the Republic of Korea; the Russian Federation; and the United States of America. This experimental and collaborative research aims to create sustainable energy for the world by harnessing nuclear fusion to solve the world’s energy requirements. ITER nuclear fusion research and engineering megaproject, will be the world's largest magnetic confinement plasma physics experiment. It is an experimental tokamak nuclear fusion reactor that is being built next to the Cadarache facility in Saint-Paul-lès-Durance, in Provence, southern France. Presently over 2,000 people are collaborating at the ITER site in Saint Paul-lez-Durance, France and in China, the European Union, India, Japan, Korea, Russia and the United States to build the ITER Tokamak, the world's most advanced tokamak magnetic confinement fusion experiment. More than 200 Tokamaks around the world have paved the way to the ITER experiment.

Conceived as the last experimental step to prove the feasibility of fusion as a large-scale and carbon-free source of energy, ITER will be the world's largest tokamak, with ten times the plasma volume of the largest tokamak operating today.

ITER India was contributing to the project in numerous areas. The Cooling water system was a major part of the Design and Manufacturing Activities which India had to supply to ITER. Cooling Water System has two main parts, viz. Tokamak Cooling Water System and Cooling Water System, out of which Cooling Water System was a part of India’s Design, Procurement and Supply Scope. ITER-India entrusted TCE the responsibility of detailed engineering for the project for Cooling Water System. TCE was a part of the conceptual design phase and preliminary design phase which formed the foundation for their final design.

2008-09 - Conceptual Design

TCE was involved in the Conceptual Design activities of the Cooling Water System.

2011-12 - Preliminary Design

During the Preliminary Design, TCE was not only responsible for the Design of the Complete Cooling Water System but also present the same to ITER, IO in France. TCE was involved in Process, Electrical, I&C and Civil Design of the complete Cooling Water System. This involved Hydraulic Analysis, Process Equipment Selection, PFD, P&ID, Piping Layout and 3D Model in CATIA, Stress Analysis, Support Qualification as per Euro Codes, FMEA and RAMI Analysis, Design Compliance, Procurement Specification and Preparation of documents associated with analysis and Procurement Specification.

2017-18 - Re-qualification of systems designed and transferring entire data from

TCE is involved in updating the stress re-analysis and support re-qualification to confirm the piping qualifies with 3 times higher Spectrum. The main challenge was to qualify the system of already procured piping and already constructed embedded plates at Site. The margin for changes was almost negligible and in that condition, TCE qualified the system for an increased spectrum. TCE successfully qualified both the system and the systems corresponding supports with Euro Codes. TCE was also involved in the building up an AVVEA E3D Model from CATIA and to generate all the detail engineering documents, viz. Design Isometrics, Fabrication Isometrics, BOM, General Arrangement Drawings and Support Drawings. Additional Requirements were included in the contract which were beam joint verification calculation of the re-qualified supports as per EURO Codes and Hybrid Flange (CS with SS) Connection Analysis.

Deputation of Engineers at Site for

Currently TCE engineers of different specialization are working at site to help ITER for delivering the Engineering Work Packages to the Construction Team for Erection. More engineers are expected to be deployed to ITER France in coming months.

Innovative edge:

TCE is involved in updating the stress re-analysis and support re-qualification to confirm the piping qualifies with 3 times higher Spectrum. The main challenge was to qualify the system of already procured piping and already constructed embedded plates at Site. The margin for changes was almost negligible and, in that condition,, we qualified the system for an increased spectrum. TCE successfully qualified the system and its corresponding supports with Euro Codes.