During two days the design of the Upper Launcher was reviewed by a board of experts. Together with ITER, Fusion for Energy and the combined efforts by many subcontractors a lot of effort was put in getting the port plug design ready for this important milestone.

The review covered many technical aspects and several small issues were identified which need to be resolved before the manufacturing can be started. The HIT contribution focused on the analysis of Remote Handling maintenance compatibility. For the first time in many years, we were able to give a green light (“in principle ok”) for the RH compatibility of most in-vessel parts, while a few technical details still need to be resolved. For us at HIT, on the in-vessel side, we will need to look into more detail at maintainability of the focus mirror (M3) and the steering mirror (M4). On the ex-vessel side, we will shift our main focus to the port cell area, to get the components in there ready and maintainable for first installation.