Phoenix to play key role in world's largest civil engineering project

摘要

Phoenix Inspection Systems is playing a pivotal role in the construction of the world's largest civil engineering project. The Warrington-based company is developing a major weld inspection system for the 5 billion Euro International Tokamak Experimental Reactor (ITER) to be built at Cadarache in France. ITER is the next step in the search for fusion power as a commercial energy source. The project is funded by the EU, United States, Russia, Japan, China, India and South Korea. Phoenix has been awarded a €320K contract to develop special ultrasonic techniques to check the welds in the ITER vacuum vessel, which holds the high temperature fusion plasma. The vessel consists of nine segments welded in place in a doughnut-style 'Tokamak' structure. Narrow gap welding using either Tungsten Inert Gas (TIG) or Electron Beam (EB) reduces the risk of distortion. However, such welds are difficult to inspect using conventional techniques and these difficulties are compounded by the confines of the vessel structure.