Divertor Test Platform facility inaugurated in Finland
The °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¸ßÊÖ Divertor Test Platform Facility, a research platform to develop and test the maintenance robot and remote handling operations, was inaugurated last Thursday in Tampere, Finland. The facility hosts the first full-size prototype of the cassette multifunctional mover.
The cassette mover will be required to transport °ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¸ßÊÖ's divertor cassettes, each weighing 9 to 10 tonnes, along a complex trajectory in order to negotiate the path along the divertor access duct from the transfer cask to the plasma chamber. This process must be executed with pinpoint accuracy since the access route is such that delicate plasma facing elements of the 3.5 metre-long x 2.5 metre-high cassette have to pass within a few centimetres of the vacuum vessel surfaces.
The 20-metre-long, 65-tonne structure is the product of a successful collaboration between the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and Tampere University of Technology (TUT). The design and manufacture of this core prototype has taken four years under the management of Euratom and the fusion research centres through the European Fusion Development Agreement (EFDA).