ITER blanket manifold system: Integration, assembly and maintenance

•The ITER in-vessel components have experienced a major redesign since the ITER Design Review of 2007.•-The blanket manifold system has been redesigned to improve leak detection and localization.•-The redesign of the blanket manifold system into a system based on individual pipes has proven to be a major engineering challenge.

The ITER Tokamak Cooling Water System (TCWS) provides coolant for blankets and divertor. The blanket system consists of 440 blanket modules (BMs). The blanket manifold consists of a system of seamless pipes arranged in bundles and routed in poloidal direction from the upper ports of the Vacuum Vessel (VV) to the bottom of the machine. In each of the 18 upper ports there are 20 inlet and 20 outlet pipes, which split at the port exit in two directions, supplying cooling water to either the inboard or the outboard blanket modules. The manifold is routed between the VV and BMs. Branch pipes provide the connection between the manifold and the blanket cooling circuits through a coaxial connector welded to the shield block. A complex, sequential installation sequence has been developed in order to enable the assembly. Once installed the manifold is considered a semi-permanent component, but since failure would prevent ITER operation a maintenance strategy has been planned.