Civil Works & Foundations

The reactor hall foundation carries heavy shielding and precision coil loads, with alignment tolerance driving the civil specification.

Civil works create the stable, aligned, shielded volume the machine sits in. The dominant loads are static: the mass of the high-field plug and central-cell coil structure, the radiation shielding, and the cryogenic and vacuum vessels. The foundation is designed for low differential settlement because coil alignment tolerance is tight along the tandem-mirror axis.

Alignment governs the spec

A tandem mirror is only as good as the straightness of its magnetic axis. The plug–central-cell–plug line must be held to survey tolerance through machine assembly and thermal cycling. The bedplate and its anchoring are designed so that cool-down of the superconducting coils does not walk the axis out of specification.

Shielding integration

Radiation shielding is heavy and its placement is order-dependent — you cannot easily add a shield block after adjacent components are set. Civil design pre-plans shield support, penetrations, and the labyrinths that let cooling, vacuum, and diagnostics pass without creating radiation streaming paths.

Services and drainage

• Trenches and chases for cryogenic transfer lines
• Cooling-water supply and return routing
• Cable galleries for power and instrumentation
• Containment curbs and drainage for tritium-bearing systems

All civil interfaces are frozen against the design geometry before steel is set, because rework in a shielded hall is disproportionately costly in schedule and dose.