Design and development of the ITER vacuum vessel

In ITER, the vacuum vessel (VV) is designed to be a water cooled, double-walled toroidal structure made of 316LN stainless steel with a D-shaped cross section approximately 9 m wide and 15 m high. The design work which began at the beginning of the ITER-EDA is nearing completion by resolving the technical issues. In parallel with the design activities, the R&D program, Full-scale VV Sector Model Project, was initiated in 1995 to resolve the design and fabrication issues. The full-scale sector model corresponds to an 18° sector (9° sub-sector×2) and is being fabricated on schedule. To date, 60% of the fabrication had been completed. The fabrication of full-scale model including sector-to-sector connection will be completed by the end of 1997 and performance tests are scheduled until the end of ITER-EDA. This paper describes the latest status of the ITER VV design and the Full-scale Sector Model Project.