Manufacture and first wall joining for an ITER primary wall module prototype: R&D phase with small scale mock-ups

In the frame of the Primary Wall Module prototype manufacturing for ITER, a consistent R&D phase was conducted in order to identify the industrial allowable tolerances and manufacturing problems which would occur when joining pieces by HIPping process during the PW module manufacturing. The purpose of this development was to give as industrial as possible manufacturing routes for joining together large Stainless Steel or DS-Copper pieces with Stainless Steel tubes and for bonding Beryllium tiles onto a curved component surface. The study concerned surface preparations, allowable gaps and joint geometry, Beryllium tile geometry, Titanium interlayer thickness, … This R&D phase also allowed the development and validation of different ultrasonic inspection tools needed for plate-plate, tube-plate, edge to edge plate bonding.