Following an international competition, bringing together the best European Engineering’s, Fusion for Energy ‘F4E’, the Entity representing Europe in the construction of the reactor, has finally decided to award GTD with the contract to perform services for Instrumentation and Control of the Machine. This contract, one of the most important and emblematic of the project is valued at € 5 million. The ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor), includes the participation of Europe, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the United States. It is a very complex project which aims to demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of controlled nuclear fusion as a future source of energy, safe, environmentally friendly, sustainable and clean. ITER is based on the concept of "Tokamak" magnetic confinement, in which the plasma is contained in a vacuum chamber with a toroidal shape. The fuel - a mixture of deuterium and tritium - is heated to temperatures above 150 million Celsius to form a hot plasma. The project will cost 10,300 million euros, making it the third most expensive in history after the International Space Station and the Manhattan Project. GTD contract includes the design and supply of tools and services for machine control. These services range from the implementation of the interface between industrial systems supplied and ITER CODAC (communication control data access), to the provision of services in the areas of software and control. The contract also includes the development of all necessary software for running the diagnostics of plasma, which is the most critical process of the entire machine. The Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE), which is the UK's national laboratory for nuclear fusion research, will be associated to GTD for all the works related to the nuclear fusion expertise. This center is based at the Culham Science Centre in Oxfordshire, and is operated by the Atomic Energy Authority of the United Kingdom. For electronic assemblies, GTD also will subcontract JMP Engineering Company of La Rioja (Spain). The contract will entail the involvement of over 14 highly skilled engineers for 4 years.
