Technical visits, September 11th
In the event that the minimum attendance for a visit has not been reached, we reserve the right to cancel the visit and the participants will be fully reimbursed
Visit to ITER and CEA Tore Supra
(Site of Cadarache 40 km from Aix en Provence)
Price: 80€ per person (round trip by bus, visits and lunch)
We propose a guided tour to ITER and CEA Tore Supra. These facilities are both devoted to the study of Tokamak technology for generating energy through fusion, but are separated institutions. Tore Supra can be seen as the CEA-Euratom ancestor of ITER, the future international Tokamak prototype. Both are located on the Cadarache site, 40 km of Aix-en-Provence, and 350 km south of Lyon, where Eucas 2015 is taking place.
Please note all tours are subject to platform conditions and modifications without prior notice.
Program of the day
06:00 - 10:00 Departure from Lyon Convention Center by bus to Cadarache
10:00 - 10:30 Entrance formalities
10:30 - 12:00 Guided tour of ITER and Tore Supra
12:00 - 14:00 Lunch at le Château de Cadarache (salle de la Fénière)
14:00 - 14:30 Entrance formalities
14:30 - 16:00 Guided tour of ITER and Tore Supra
16:00 - 20:00 Return to Lyon Convention Center by bus
Information & documents needed for this visit :In accordance with safety and security regulations, all visitors must have a valid government-issued ID. That means every foreign visitors must come with his/her passport at the visit.
Note that since each site has its own access, entrance formalities will take place twice.
People who do not want to go back to Lyon may join Aix en Provence. There is a bus service, the CPA line 150 (Aix-en-Provence--St Paul lez Durance), that stops directly in front of ITER or CEA Cadarache.
Inside Tore Supra (CIEL configuration 2002)
The "Château de Cadarache" for lunch and a view from above of the Cadarache site
A view of the ITER work site on the side of the Tokamak pit
ITER: the world's largest Tokamak
ITER means International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, but also "the way" in Latin. The ITER project is designed to demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of fusion energy. ITER is based on the 'tokamak' concept of magnetic confinement, in which the plasma is contained in a doughnut-shaped vacuum vessel. The fuel—a mixture of deuterium and tritium, two isotopes of hydrogen—is heated to temperatures in excess of 150 million°C, forming a hot plasma. Strong magnetic fields are used to keep the plasma away from the walls; these are produced by superconducting coils surrounding the vessel, and by an electrical current driven through the plasma.
The scale and scope of the ITER Project rank it among the most ambitious science endeavors of our time. Building began in 2010 on the ITER platform in Cadarache, France where 35 nations are collaborating to realize the world's largest tokamak fusion device.
 Image credit: ITER Organization 2013 |
The incredibly complex ITER Tokamak will be nearly 30 metres tall, and weigh 23,000 tons. The very small man dressed in blue (bottom right) gives some idea of the machine's scale. The ITER Tokamak is made up of an estimated one million parts. |
 Assembly Building |
 Cryostat Workshop |  Tokamak Complex |
Please note all tours are subject to platform conditions and modifications without prior notice.
Link :
http://www.iter.org/
Tore Supra, the fusion reactor of the CEA, toward the WEST project
On the other side of the CEA fence, in Cadarache, sits a large tokamak which played an important role in the definition of ITER. Tore Supra, a CEA-Euratom device which began operating in 1988, was the first tokamak to successfully implement superconducting magnets and actively-cooled plasma-facing components.
Over the past twenty-four years, Tore Supra has explored the physics of long-duration plasma pulses, reaching a record of 6.5 minutes in December 2003.
Nowadays, the Institute for Magnetic Fusion Research (CEA/DSM/IRFM) is modifying the Tore Supra plasma facility which, once transformed, will become a test platform open to all ITER partners : the WEST project (acronym derived from W Environment in Steady-state Tokamak, where W is the chemical symbol for tungsten). The goal is to equip the tokamak with an actively cooled tungsten divertor, benefitting from its unique long pulse capabilities, its high level of additional power and the unique experience of operation with actively cooled components. The divertor is a key component which faces the largest part of the heat and particle fluxes coming from the core plasma during experiments.
Since Tore Supra was a circular plasma device with a toroidal limiter, the upgrade firstly consists in inserting additional in-vacuum vessel magnetic coils to allow the production of divertor plasma shapes, just like those which ITER uses.
The WEST tungsten divertor elements will use the same design and manufacturers as the ITER ones. The series production and operation of the ITER tungsten components are the new challenges that the WEST Project will address, in close collaboration with ITER Organization and all interested parties.
Inside WEST vacuum vessel early April 2015
When you think of the fact that Tore Supra already is an impressively big machine
with many diagnostics, surely ITER will be mind-blowing!
Links :
http://www-fusion-magnetique.cea.fr/cea/ts/ts.htm
http://www-cadarache.cea.fr/fr/activites/fusion/
http://west.cea.fr
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