HRP facility for fabrication of ITER vertical target divertor full scale plasma facing units

Abstract ENEA and Ansaldo Nucleare S.p.A. (ANN) have being deeply involved in the European development activities for the manufacturing of the ITER Divertor Inner Vertical Target (IVT) plasma-facing components. During normal operation the heat flux deposited on the bottom segment of divertor is 5–10 MW/m 2 but the capability to remove up to 20 MW/m 2 during transient events of 10 s must also be demonstrated. In order to fulfill ITER requirements, ENEA has set up and widely tested a manufacturing process, named Hot Radial Pressing (HRP). The last challenge is now to fabricate full-scale prototypes of the IVT, aimed to be qualified for the next step, i.e. the series production. On the basis of the experience of manufacturing hundreds of small mock-ups, ENEA designed and installed a new suitable HRP facility. The objective of getting a final shaped plasma facing unit (PFU) that satisfies these requirements is an ambitious target because tolerances set by ITER/F4E are very tight. The setting-up of the equipment started with the fabrication of full scale and representative ‘dummies’ in which stainless steel instead of CFC or W was used for monoblocks. The results confirmed that dimensions were compliant with the required tolerances. The paper reports a brief description of the innovative HRP equipment and the dimensional check results after HRP of the first full-scale full-W PFU.