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Most of ITER’s diagnostics will be provided with viewing lines (optical, microwave, and spectroscopic) for the monitoring of key characteristics of the plasma or for the achievement of physical measurements inside the vacuum vessel. The nature of the physical signal transmitted through the viewing lines requires the implementation of window assemblies incorporating nonmetallic window. Placed at the vacuum boundary, the window assembly shall also ensure the vacuum integrity required for the plasma. Moreover, the diagnostic window assemblies form part of the ITER primary confinement boundary, and thus, directly related to the nuclear safety. This paper gives an overview of their design and related on-going engineering assessments by analysis or tests in the final design phase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Diagnostic Port Plugs provide an infrastructure for integrating the diagnostics necessary to operate the machine, while withstanding the nuclear and mechanical loads. They have to provide neutron shielding in order to ensure accessibility to the Port Interspace (PI) region for maintenance operations. This report is about the study to mitigate the ITER Shutdown Dose Rate in Port Interspace. This is a strong design driver for the Equatorial Port Plugs (EPPs) requiring a neutron attenuation of 7 orders of magnitude while maintaining the weight limit. To achieve this challenging task, the design has evolved to an improved double labyrinth configuration with welded shims at the back of the EPP to reduce the gap with the Vacuum Vessel Port Extension. This proved to be very successful for this task. Neutron stoppers have been placed after the gaps necessary for the insertion of the Diagnostic Shielding Modules (DSMs) housed inside the EPP. Effort was also placed in the further development of the DSMs. The latest design relies on a stainless steel structure and lightweight efficient neutron absorbing materials inside. Studies of cross talk with lower ports and the influence of the streaming through the blanket area are presented to give the status of the radiation environment in the Port Interspace region and their contribution to the Shutdown Dose Rate (SDR). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For effective vacuum leak testing all cooling circuits serving the ITER vessel and in-vessel components shall be drained and dried so that after this procedure taking less than 100 h the purge gas passing through a component has water content less than 100 ppm. This process is four-stage, with the first stage using a short blast of compressed nitrogen to blow most of water in the coolant channels out of the circuit. This process is hindered by volumes which trap water due to gravity. To remove the trapped water, it is necessary, first, to heat up the structure by hot and compressed nitrogen, and then water is evaporated by depressurized nitrogen. The cooling system of the ITER Diagnostic Equatorial Port Plugs is of a complicated hydraulic configuration. The system branching might make difficult removal of water from the piping in the scheduled draining mode. The authors have proposed the KORSAR computation code to simulate draining of the GEPP cooling circuit. The numerical simulation performed has made it possible to describe the process dynamics during draining of the entire GEPP cooling circuit and to define the process time, amount and location of residual water and evolution of two-phase flow regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The generic upper port plug (GUPP) structure in ITER is a 6 m long metal box which deploys diagnostic components into the vacuum vessel. This structure is commonly used for all the diagnostic upper ports. The final design of the GUPP structure, which has successfully passed the final design review in 2013, is described here. The diagnostic port plug is cantilevered to the vacuum vessel with a heavy payload at the front, so called the diagnostic first wall (DFW) and the diagnostic shield module (DSM). Most of electromagnetic (EM) load (∼80%) occurs in DFW/DSM. Therefore, the mounting design to transfer the EM load from DFW/DSM to the GUPP structure is challenging, which should also comply with thermal expansion and tolerance for assembly and manufacturing. Another key design parameter to be considered is the gap between the port plug and the vacuum vessel port. The gap should be large enough to accommodate the remote handling of the heavy port plug (max. 25 t), the structural deflection due to external loads and machine assembly tolerance. At the same time, the gap should be minimized to stop the neutron streaming according to the ALARA (as low as reasonably achievable) principle. With these design constraints, the GUPP structure should also provide space for diagnostic integration as much as possible. This requirement has led to the single wall structure having the gun-drilled water channels inside the structure. Furthermore, intensive efforts have been made on the manufacturing study including material selection, manufacturing codes and French regulation related to nuclear equipment and safety. All these main design and manufacturing aspects are discussed in this paper, including requirements, interfaces, loads and structural assessment and maintenance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]