Machine assembly | First magnet in place
When it travelled the ITER Itinerary last year, or during cold tests in the onsite winding facility, poloidal field coil #6 (PF6) felt rather large and massive. Although only 10 metres in diameter—compared to 24 metres for the largest of the six ring coils that circle the machine—the 330-tonne coil is particularly thick and bulky. But everything is relative. On Thursday 21 April when the coil was extracted from its support frame and lifted 25 metres overhead to be transferred to the assembly pit, the perception of its size changed dramatically: dwarfed by the huge volume of the Hall, it suddenly felt small—a steel frisbee slowly gliding through immensity.