European contribution to the development of the ITER divertor

In the frame of the ITER Project, EFDA has carried out a number of R&D activities in support of the development of the ITER divertor together with the European Associations and Industries and in collaboration with the ITER International Team. These contributions covered a variety of subjects, namely: technology development, high heat flux testing, irradiation campaigns of mock-ups and samples, carbon fibre reinforced carbon (CFC) material development and characterisation, non-destructive testing, thermohydraulics, development of the multilink attachments between the plasma facing components and the cassette body, design activities. The present European efforts in the divertor area are focussed on: (1) the optimisation of the technologies in view of the series production during ITER construction, (2) the development of repairing methods, (3) the completion of the tests on irradiated mock-ups and samples, (4) the completion of the critical heat flux database on CFC monoblocks, (5) the finalisation of the multilink attachment design and (5) the revision of the divertor design to reduce the electromagnetic loads and to make the manufacturing easier and less costly.