”We have the best people on the ground,” says Daniel Coelho the ITER assembly engineer who will coordinate the operation.
The same team responsible for the lift and installation of the 1,350-tonne sector module in May 2022 will be on deck this week—in all, close to 50 people working for the ITER Organization and contracting companies. Working in close coordination, they will lift the sector module out of the assembly pit and transfer it to one of the twin sector sub-assembly tools (SSAT-2), where it will be disassembled so that some of its elements (the vacuum vessel sector itself and thermal shield panels) can be readied for repair.
Extracting” might be the semantic opposite of “inserting,” but in the context of this huge component the extraction will not be a perfect reverse operation. Procedures and tools have been adapted to deal with a situation that was not initially anticipated, but that is now planned through a carefully constructed scenario.
Late on Monday afternoon, as the last details were being worked out, the team members were both focused and confident. “We have the best people on the ground,” confided Daniel Coelho, the ITER assembly engineer who will coordinate the operation.
Source, NASA.