Pumping up the volume
8 Dec 2008
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Sabina Griffith
The first roughing pump workshop with participation from the °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¸ßÊÖ Organization and the US Domestic Agency was held last week. A three-day meeting held partly at Cadarache and partly in Cologne, aimed at starting the development program for the °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¸ßÊÖ roughing pumps.
Roughing pumps are used to transport gas from the °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¸ßÊÖ machine to the tritium plant and recycle gas in the °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¸ßÊÖ pellet injectors. Due to the high gas throughputs on °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¸ßÊÖ and the very large vacuum systems, the roughing pumps will be extremely challenging to design. The workshop brought together the experts in the °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¸ßÊÖ Organization, US teams, and industrial companies to identify the key technological issues to be solved.