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Next Back to Fusion Homepage| The European Community, including
Switzerland, decided in the 70's to build a large tokamak with the goal of achieving the
fusion breakeven. This tokamak, JET, is now the largest in operation in the world with a
major radius of about 3 meters. The large additional power available lead the plasma to
good confinement regimes and this tokamak produces plasmas with the highest performance
scores: up to 16 MW of fusion power has been achieved in Deuterium - Tritium plasmas. Many
experiments are conducted on this machine, studiyng principaly different heating schemes
and different techniques of ash removal through the design of different divertors. This
European project plays a very important step in the world fusion programme. JET has been very successful in operating with robotics as it will be used in a future fusion power station. Remote handling techniques have been used in a radioactive environment to modify the interior of the JET device. The objective was to change the "divertor", which can be thought of as the exhaust system of a fusion device, to the "gas box" configuration favoured for the next generation of fusion machines. Such techniques will be essential for the operation of a fusion power station. The operation was performed using the JET Mascot servo-manipulator. This has been achieved by developing a Human-Machine Interface which in effect extends the operators own arms into the interior of JET. This provides the operator with a sense of "touch" and, together with the associated closed circuit TV system, creates a sense of presence inside the JET torus. In May 1998, this highly successful operation has shown clearly that the remote handling maintenance of fusion devices is realistic. JET Homepage |
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