In South West France, engineers are working with scientists to harness the power of the sun.
CD : ITER is basically a fusion research and engineering project where they're looking at creating energy through a fusion process, which can be compared to that of the sun.
CD : One of the main goals in doing that and achieving that is to demonstrate that fusion can be a continuous control process. So they're looking at sustaining the fusion for long periods of time to make it viable as a product to go onto the grid.
CD :It'll be the largest fusion reactor ever built.
The heart of the experiment is the Tokomak, a complex arrangement of magnets that will hold a torus—or doughnut—of plasma in place, creating the conditions for nuclear fusion.
CD : The Tokamak building, which is the centerpiece of the project where the fusion will take place, is definitely the most complex part of our scope.
CD : And just to give an idea of the scale of it, it's standing at 60 meters high.
CD : The foundation is about 20 meters below ground.
CD : It's made with over 100,000 cubic metres of reinforced concrete, which is designed to house the ITER machine, which is coming in at more than 23,000 tonnes.
CD : Within the Tokamak, there are areas, if you can imagine it, there are areas where the walls are over three metres thick.
Welcome to Engineering Matters. I’m Rhian Owen, and I’m Alex Conacher. In this episode, part of a mini-series produced in partnership with Egis, we will be looking at the systems that have been developed to bring together engineers from around the world, fusing their skills in the service of one of humanity’s greatest experiments.
Caroline Dixon is project director, nuclear power, for Egis in France. She has spent more than 12 years with Engage, the architecture and engineering consortium that was appointed by European agency F4E, or Fusion For Energy, to deliver much of the initial construction at the reactor. Her, and Egis’s, work on the project continues, now as part of the b.NEXT consortium.
She’s helping to deliver a potential breakthrough for nuclear science—but she’s no nuclear scientist.
CD : ITER was my first experience in the nuclear field. Previously I'd always worked on bridge and port infrastructure projects across several different countries and initially I found it very very frustrating—slow lots of regulations —but I have to say sort of 11, 12 years later I look at it in a very different light. It's so complex. And I think it brings a sense of meaningfulness, if you like, about contributing to something that has a tangible impact on people's lives while also supporting cleaner energy solutions.
Caroline’s expertise has helped organise teams of engineers from across Europe, working alongside partners from around the world.
CD : Just for the civil works alone across the site, there's more than 3000 people contributing to it.
CD : And that's literally just for the civil works, not including all the mechanical electrical fit out and all the process engineering, all the fancy reactor technology that gets involved.
ITER is an international collaboration. The project is supported by seven member parties—the EU, Russia, India, China, South Korea, Japan, and the USA—which each make in-kind contributions. The EU contribution is managed by F4E, and will deliver many of the buildings surrounding the Tokomak,
CD : They are responsible for coordinating the design and delivery of over 40 buildings and the building services within that.
CD : So the sort of mechanical, electrical standard building services, as well as all the infrastructure across the site's platform.
Egis, as part of Engage, was appointed to deliver architectural and engineering services for the initial build.
As Caroline and her colleagues at Engage got to work, they soon realised that a project of this complexity could not be delivered using traditional project management methods.
CD : At the start during the design delivery a, for want of a better word, 'traditional' delivery approach if you like was put in place, meaning that we would receive input data, we would freeze it, and then we would design under this specific configuration and once it was complete it would go through a formal design review process and whole point release process.
The engineers simply couldn’t keep up with the scientists on this cutting edge project.
CD : However with it being experimental and a one-of-a-kind, of course research and design was developing all the time so there were a lot of changes that kept coming through the pipeline and that were obviously impacting the building structures, and especially the Tokamak.
A new approach was needed to resolve clashes that occurred as the scientists refined their design.
CD : Engage were charged with setting up a hotline system for the Tokomak complex only. That enabled basically rapid assessment and approval of critical modifications with the goal being obviously to not impact the concrete pouring program and sequencing of the civil works contractor.
The team managing the hotline worked to resolve the most intractable clashes.
CD : Most of the changes within the hotline were related to embedded plates. You know, there are tens of thousands of plates, steel plates embedded into the concrete throughout the whole Tokamak complex. And they were initially assigned to different processes based on a preliminary design layout. However, as the years go on, obviously these designs have changed. The system routing has changed.
The team continued to see challenges on site, beyond just the Tokomak complex. The success of the hotline led to a new way of handling clashes.
CD : ITER launched this HIT process, this holistic integration team, back in 2018, in collaboration with F4E and Engage. And the idea being that the team would act as a, I suppose, a multi-stakeholder sort of integration cell team, that was tasked with delivering a fully clash-free design and a coordinated installation sequence for all the systems in the Tokamak.
The Holistic Integration Team was coordinated by Engage
CD : The Engage teams were very involved, and we took the roles of overseeing the full coordination and final integration.
CD : The Tokamak was split into different areas where the team, the integration coordinators, would work to ensure resolution of all the clashes. So that sounds quite simple. It was a very long, frustrating work for everyone involved, I think: beneficial, but could be frustrating.
CD : And then we'd bring them to workshops held on a weekly basis, sometimes every other day, in fact depending on the amount of problems where all the representatives from the different processes along with the coordinators would brainstorm solutions in a room and work through it all together.
This collaboration was supported by the use of digital tools.
CD : 4d construction simulations were produced as well, which especially in congested areas where you could barely see light—there was so much piping and systems, you know—it really helped us to visualise where the problems would arise and which order things had to be placed inside the tokamak and sort of hence it would mitigate any supply chain and site installation issues well in advance.
These tools allowed the team to identify and eliminate clashes, before work started. But the integration team relied on human collaboration, as much as sophisticated simulations.
CD : So it made sure that everybody was aligned, that everybody was moving forward together and you didn't have conflicts at a later stage. So yeah, very much proactive rather than reactive.
This is an approach Caroline believes could be taken up on other projects.
CD : For complex nuclear projects or other complex infrastructure projects, it's quite invaluable.
To make it work, project owners need to implement an integration approach early.
CD : The process, for sure, should be implemented as early as possible in the project cycle. The earlier, the better, and be managed by a neutral team. I mean, the team managing it, a little like Engage, should have a mandate to not only be neutral, but to be empowered, in fact, to prioritise the system integration above any other stakeholders, scope or interests.
Digital tools are a vital tool for integration, but the old methods of bringing people together in a room are still best.
CD : What I personally found extremely advantageous as well was having a co-located team.
CD : In fact, when you're looking at complex packed areas with all kinds of things going on, you can't, there's no replacing to having a whiteboard and picking up a few colored pens and having people draw on it to get their idea across.
And it’s the fusing of minds that will set humanity on a path to abundant green energy.
CD : It promotes that teamwork and collaboration, which I think is invaluable.
CD : You know, we're all in it together.
