Doosan Heavy Industries will supply a pressurizer for the massive, multi-national nuclear fusion research project – ITER – in southern France.
South Korean Doosan signed an agreement to participate in the International Thermonuclear Experiment Reactor (ITER) project. A 35-nation consortium is working on efforts to harness the same nuclear process which fuels the sun.
Doosan Heavy has formed its own consortium with UK-based subsidiary Doosan Babock to design, manufacture and supply the pressurizer for the ITER. The device would need to be capable of maintaining the pressure of the heat exchange system and also protect it from overpressure.
The pressurizer should be constructed and delivered by 2022.
“This order represents once again the worldwide recognition that Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction is receiving for its capability to design and manufacture power generation equipment,” Kiyong Na, CEO of Doosan Heavy’s Nuclear Business Group, said in a statement. “We plan to continue with our efforts to contribute to the commercialization of nuclear fusion.”
The project launched in 2007 will be constructed in Cadarache, France, and completed by 2025. The experiments will be carried out through 2042, according to reports.
Billed as the world’s largest science project, ITER is gigantic. The circular device, called a tokamak, has a 30-meter circumference, stands 30 meters (100 feet) high, and is made up of more than a million parts constructed in numerous countries.
The project’s estimated cost just for the European union was about 20 billion euros ($23.5 billion), Bigot told reporters.
The origins of ITER date as far back as the 1980s as an initiative joining the United States and then Soviet Union.
