At the end of October Heemskerk Innovative Technology started on a unique assignment from South Korea: To perform a Remote Handling maintenance analysis for ITER Upper Port # 18 and an analysis of the installation and maintenance of the NAS system.

The project is commissioned by the Korean National Fusion Research Institute (NFRI), the Korean Domestic Agency (KO DA), and is performed in partnership with the FOM Institute DIFFER.

In the project, we focus on the maintenance activities for Upper Port Plug 18 (UP # 18) in the ITER Hot Cell Facility. The attention is paid to the installation and maintenance of the vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) system, Neutron Activation System (NAS) and Vertical Neutron Camera (VNC) components inside UP#18.

The Neutron Activation System consists of a large number of probes, which are installed in various parts of the ITER vacuum vessel. The system consists of special steel tubes, that bring a sample plug close to the plasma. Part of the probe locations is on the central solenoid, some of them are located behind the blanket, others are in port plugs and under the divertor.