Engineering challenges of the JET ITER-like Wall

The ITER-like Wall (ILW) project offers an integrated test of the ITER reference materials in relevant plasma conditions. The objective of the ILW is to replace all the carbon-based plasma facing components (PFCs) with metal ones: a predominantly beryllium wall and a tungsten divertor. The ILW will have to accommodate enhanced additional heating up to 50 MW for up to 20 s, subject to two technical constraints: keep the PFCs inertially cooled only and limit disruption forces on existing infrastructures at the levels set by the present PFCs. In the following it is shown how the ILW can sustain 5 MA 4 T disruptions, offers a life of over several thousands of high power pulses and can be fully replaced by remote handling. Even if the new wall will not be operational until 2010, the ILW is already making the materials driven operational constraints predicted for ITER a more immediate reality for JET.