Remote Joining and Cutting
Replacing an in-vessel component means remaking coolant, structural, and electrical connections by manipulator — joining and cutting are the enabling craft.
Make and break, remotely
Every replaceable component is connected to the machine by coolant lines, structure, and sometimes electrical leads. Replacing it means cutting those connections and remaking them with remote tools, to a quality that will hold vacuum and pressure through operation. Remote joining and cutting are the specific skills that make component replacement possible.
Why it is hard
- Welds and cuts must be made in confined, high-dose spaces.
- Coolant and vacuum joints must be leak-tight after remaking.
- Access is limited by the compact machine's geometry.
- Inspection must confirm joint quality remotely before restart.
Design for remakeable joints
The machine is designed with joints that a manipulator can reach and remake: standardized fittings, accessible weld lines, and connections placed where tooling can operate. A joint that is perfect but unreachable is useless once the component behind it must be replaced. Remakeability is a design requirement, decided when the machine is laid out.
Verification before restart
A remade joint must be inspected remotely — for leaks, weld integrity, and alignment — before the machine restarts. This verification step is part of the maintenance sequence and part of the safety case, ensuring that a component swap does not introduce a failure the next campaign would find the hard way.
Qualified remote procedures
Every remote cut and re-join follows a procedure qualified in advance on mock-ups, so the manipulator executes a proven sequence rather than improvising in a high-dose space. Qualification covers tooling, access, and inspection together, ensuring that a joint made remotely meets the same integrity standard as one made by hand during initial assembly.
This page documents a design and simulation study, not a built machine. Construction begins Q2 2027; first-of-a-kind first tritium is targeted near 2030. Figures are computed, reproducible targets, not measurements.