Hyundai Heavy Industries wins $101.6 mln order to supply two vacuum vessel sectors for ITER
Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI), the world’s largest shipbuilder and a leading industrial plant EPC contractor, today announced that it won $101.6 million worth of order to supply two vacuum vessel sectors (No.7, 8) for ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor).
This is an additional order to the one HHI received from the international body in 2010 to build two vacuum vessel sectors (No.1 and 6) and 35 ports out of 53. HHI is scheduled to deliver the two vacuum sectors measuring 400 tons in weight and 12 m in height respectively at the Cadarache facility in the south of France where the experimental tokamak nuclear fusion reactor is being built by the year of 2020.
The nuclear fusion reactor project that South Korea, USA, EU, Japan, China, Russia, and India are jointly running aims to artificially produce and commercialize nuclear fusion energy by the year of 2025.
The vacuum vessel sectors ensure the optimal vacuum environment for the plasma produced in the ITER and work as a first tier barrier for neutrons created during the nuclear fusion reaction. Building the vacuum vessel requires the-state-of-the-art 3D modeling and welding technologies for the equipment to be able to withstand ultra-high temperatures (100 million °C) and ultra-high vacuum conditions.
