The superconducting toroid delivered form the ASG plant in La Spezia, arrived at the Via della Concia gate (Truck Village) on November 21st
The magnet has been produced by the ASG Superconductors plant in La Spezia, and arrived at the La Spezia Container Terminal the night between November 20th and 21st . The access gate was specially modified to allow the entrance, in the terminal, of the oversized load that carried the toroid. Similarly, traffic inside the terminal was also blocked, to allow the exceptionally large and slow moving vehicle to reach the Calata Artom dock, predisposed for embarkation.
Lifting operations were assigned to the company Vernazza, which specially set up a DEMAG TC 2800 crane that can lift up to 600 tons for the embarking of the magnet.
The embarking and lifting operations on the Bremer Elena ship, a general cargo ship with box-shaped holds, have been carried out with the help of the LSCT personnel. Procedures started on Monday, November 27th, at 07:00am with the aim to strictly observe the Method of Statement shared with the shipper, and the ended at 07:00pm with the Bremer Elena setting sail.
The superconductor is 2.8m high, 9.8m large and 16.1m long, and weighs almost 300 tons. It is the first of 18 toroids needed for the “Iter” nuclear reactor – other 9 will all be manufactured and assembled in Italy, in the ASG Superconductors plant, while the remaining 8 giant coils will be manufactured and shipped from Japan.
The Iter project aims at re-creating, on earth, within eight years’ time, the physical reaction that fuels stars in space, in order to generate and capture clean energy. The ambition of researchers is to “bring the Sun on Earth”; the giant coils will trap glowing plasma (at about 150 million degrees Celsius) inside a magnetic o-shaped field.
Watch the timelapse video of the loading procedure:
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