S. Korean to provide 'assembly tool' for Int'l fusion reactor

By Lee Joon-seung
SEOUL, Aug. 4 (Yonhap) -- South Korea has signed a procurement deal to provide
the key assembly tool needed to construct the multinational experimental fusion
reactor being built in France, the government said Tuesday.
The arrangement is part of Seoul's contribution to the International
Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project with the country fully
responsible for building and delivering the machine, the Ministry of Education,
Science and Technology said.
The tool to be built by the ITER Korea office and SFA Engineering Corporation
will be used to move and place nine key components weighing a total of 1,200 tons
within the main reactor. All parts must be placed exactly on their intended
position. A total of 639,000 euros (US$920,000) in research funding will be
granted for the designing of the tool.
It is also designed to assemble the vacuum vessel, superconducting magnets and
thermal shield that are critical for ITER operations.
"South Korea won the project because it has acquired extensive experience with
the Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research," a ministry official said.
The Korean Tokamak fusion energy device or KSTAR is a smaller version of the
ITER.
He said the latest procurement arrangement will allow the country to play a
prominent role in the design, production, test, operations and assembly of ITER
main reactor core.
The deal is the fourth of its kind involving South Korea fulfilling its
contributions to the building of the futuristic reactor.
ITER uses tritium and deuterium to release helium and neutron particles that
effectively allow for the creation of an artificial sun on Earth. Such a system
can theoretically provide the world with a limitless supply of energy.
South Korea is a member of the ITER consortium -- made up of the European Union
(EU), the United States, Japan, Russia, China and India -- which is working on an
operable fusion power testbed.
Scheduled for completion by around 2018, experiments are to be conducted for
about 20 years to check the feasibility of the technology. Once this process is
underway, a demonstration plant that can actually generate power is to be set up
sometime mid-century.
yonngong@yna.co.kr
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