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Ten times hotter than the sun

20.09.2019

Ten times hotter than the sun

High Voltage Deck: Ten meters high, eight meters wide, twelve meters long: in cooperation with Siemens AG, Karl was commissioned to construct three high-voltage units that will be used to heat the plasma in which nuclear fusion is to take place to 150 million degrees Celsius.
The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) nuclear fusion research project aims to solve nothing less than mankind's energy problem. To this end, the world's largest reactor for nuclear fusion will be built in Cadarache in the south of France by 2025. Unlike nuclear fusion, it does not produce any radioactive waste, the raw materials for it are available in almost unlimited quantities and the Karl company is also involved.

The ITER project was approved in 1985 and construction began in 2010. Today, several thousand people in 35 countries are working on the project, which is financed to the tune of 20 billion euros. The Russian physicist Andrei Sakharov invented the design principle in the 1950s. Today, his ring-shaped super furnace (tokamak) is the most common type of facility for research into thermonuclear fusion. By injecting 50 megawatts of power into the plasma, ITER is expected to generate 500 megawatts of power for seven minutes. This would supply a household with energy for a year. "A kind of sun will rise here. A sun that not only heats up to 15 million degrees, but to a temperature ten times higher. We will have a sun here that can produce nuclear fusion," enthuses Mark Henderson about the large-scale project. The physicist is researching how to master the technical tasks relating to temperature. Powerful heating systems with high-energy beams are needed to trigger the fusion reaction - a case for Karl.

Siemens, a long-standing partner of Karl, was commissioned to manufacture three equipment units for the reactor's energy supply. "Our company is proud to be part of this international project and to be involved in the construction of systems for the neutral particle injectors," says Michael Krohn from Siemens AG. Three high-voltage units, known as high-voltage decks, are to be built. The experts from Karl, Siemens' preferred supplier since 1998, were awarded the contract for their development, production and construction. The first of the three decks is located in a test facility in Padua. The other two will be integrated with other components of the energy supply system in Cadarache by 2025. They will then supply 33 megawatts of electricity to shoot neutral particles into the core of the hot plasma.

Due to the complexity of the ITER project, the decks have to meet requirements that go beyond the usual. The most difficult task was "assembling them at a height of eight meters," says Business Unit Manager Erich Gröschel: "You have to imagine the decks as air-insulated, Faraday cages with a total area of 150 square meters spread over two floors. They house transformers, power distribution systems and switch cabinets. A deck like this weighs 100 tons and stands on support insulators eight meters above the ground. Each unit is eight meters wide, twelve meters long and ten meters high. In addition, all earthquake safety requirements must be met. So the assembly was a challenge for Karl - but as they say: you grow with your tasks.