The US energy and defense company General Atomics is preparing to ship the first module of the world's most powerful magnet "central solenoid valve". It will be shipped to France and installed in the core of the experimental fusion reactor ITER.

35 partner countries including China, the European Union, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia, and the United States are building the ITER project in southern France. It is hoped that ITER can prove that fusion energy can be large-scale, safe, and based on powering our sun and stars. The same principle of carbon-free energy. Despite the challenge of COVID-19, ITER has been built nearly 75%.

The creation of the magnetic cage that will shape and control the ITER fusion plasma requires three primary magnet arrays: a D-shaped vertical array of "circular field coils", a horizontal layer of circular "polar field coils" and a central solenoid valve on the central axis.

The central solenoid valve is ITER's largest magnet, 18 meters (59 feet) high, 4.25 meters (14 feet) wide, and weighs several thousand tons when fully assembled. The unique role of this most powerful magnet is to guide current pulses in the plasma circulating around the torus, helping to shape and control the fusion reaction during long pulses. It is sometimes referred to as the "beating heart" of the ITER machine.

Its magnetic force is enough to lift an aircraft carrier 6 feet (2 meters) high. Its core magnetic field strength is 13 Tesla, which is about 280,000 times stronger than the earth's magnetic field. Therefore, the support structure of the central solenoid valve must withstand twice the thrust of the space shuttle.

The central solenoid valve will consist of six modules. Each module requires more than two years of precision manufacturing. The steel sheathed niobium-tin superconducting cable is carefully wound into a precise flat disk, and then enough disks are spliced ​​together to create a complete module. Finally, the module is packaged in a mold, and 3,800 liters (1,000 gallons) of epoxy resin is injected under vacuum to soak the insulating material and prevent bubbles or voids.

Earlier this year, General Atomics completed the final test of the first central solenoid valve module. Now that module 1 has just been packaged for travel on land and sea, it will be the first such module of ITER. Five additional central solenoid valve modules and a spare module are in different stages of manufacturing-all of these modules will be installed in 2023-2024. Soon, ITER scientists will wait anxiously when their huge newborn baby emits the first heartbeat.

"The delivery of the first ITER central solenoid valve module is an exciting milestone in the demonstration of fusion energy and an amazing achievement in the United States' ability to build super-large, high-field, high-energy superconducting magnets," Columbia’s Michael Maur The doctor said university. "GA's success in the construction, testing, and delivery of high-field superconducting magnets for fusion energy is a high-tech breakthrough for the United States and provides confidence in the realization of fusion energy in the future."

ITER will be the first fusion device to generate net energy through plasma, which means that the fusion reaction will generate more heat than the energy required to heat the plasma. ITER will also be the first fusion device to maintain fusion for a long time. ITER will generate 500 megawatts of thermal fusion power, more than 30 times the current record of the British JET Tokamak

Although ITER will not generate electricity, it will become a key test bed for the integrated technologies, materials and physical mechanisms required for the commercial production of nuclear fusion power. The lessons learned from ITER will be used to design the first generation of commercial fusion substations.

The central solenoid valve will play a key role in ITER's mission to establish fusion energy as a practical, safe and inexhaustible source of clean, abundant and carbon-free electricity.

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