With the completion of the assembly of the vacuum vessel sector module, a core device of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor in which HD Hyundai Heavy Industries participated in manufacturing, a technical turning point toward the realization of the artificial sun has been reached. Hyundai

HD Hyundai Heavy Industries attended the ‘KOREA-ITER Fusion Day’ held at the ITER construction site in Cadarache, southern France, local time on July 22, to commemorate the completion of the module assembly of the final vacuum vessel sector. About 150 officials from the Ministry of Science and ICT and domestic and foreign research institutes gathered at the event on this day to share the procurement achievements led by South Korea and discuss future international cooperation plans.

The sector module assembled this time is a form in which the final vacuum vessel sector manufactured by HD Hyundai Heavy Industries is combined with a thermal shield and superconducting magnets. The module has completed its movement to the tokamak pit for final assembly, and it is scheduled to be combined with eight other sector modules in the future to become a donut-shaped vacuum vessel weighing about 5,000 tons. ITER is humanity’s largest energy engineering project jointly promoted by seven countries, including South Korea, the United States, the European Union, and Japan.

HD Hyundai Heavy Industries showed off its unrivaled technological prowess by taking full charge of manufacturing four sectors, which accounts for 44% of the total nine sectors. Following the order of two units allocated to South Korea in 2010, the company additionally won the volume allocated to the European Union in 2016 and successfully delivered the entire volume this year.

The vacuum vessel is the core bastion of the fusion reactor that must withstand ultra-high temperature plasma of over 100 million degrees and maintain a high vacuum state. Although it is a super-sized structure measuring 11.3 meters in height and nearing 400 tons in weight, it requires a precision that does not allow even a millimeter of error for the combination between each sector. HD Hyundai Heavy Industries integrated its welding and quality management know-how accumulated while building ships and offshore plants for decades into this project.

Won Kwang-sik, Executive Vice President of HD Hyundai Heavy Industries, said through a speech, “This achievement is the fruit created by the technological competitiveness of the South Korean industry and international cooperation.” Hyundai

This is not the first time HD Hyundai Heavy Industries has made a move in fusion technology. The company was in charge of designing the main device structure of the Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) completed in 2007, and it has laid the foundation for domestic fusion research through the production of large ultra-high vacuum vessels and cryogenic vessels.

Source:Business Korea