Using Immersive 4D Planning to Build the ITER Nuclear Fusion Project
Article by Greg Demchak, Director of the Digital Innovation Laboratory (iLab) published on May 23, 2022. Free translation by beCAD. The original article can be consulted Here.
Why ITER's human experience is important in infrastructure design and construction planning
In the third century, the Greek mathematician and physicist Archimedes discovered that the volume of water he was moving in the bathtub must be equal to the volume of his immersed body. It was a real breakthrough in the scientific understanding of the time. I could now explain the principles of this discovery, but I am more interested in what he felt at that time. History books give us a clue: he screamed « Eureka » and ran naked in the streets of Syracuse to express his joy.
Imagine now that the current technology can create a safe, sustainable and carbon-free energy source to meet all the electrical needs of the planet. It's about to deserve a cry and rush outside.
The statistics and specifications show the extraordinary scale and complexity of the ITER nuclear fusion project, and I hope to shed some light on how human experience will shape its construction.
ITER for non-technical readers
The ITER project, based in France, involves some 35 countries working together to build a large nuclear fusion power plant (using the same principle that feeds our sun and our stars). The recipe is simple.
First, build the largest magnetic fusion device in the world, a tokamak, weighing the equivalent of 100 x 747 aircraft, and cool its magnets to -270°C (close to absolute zero). Second, heat inside the reactor tank at 130,000,000 °C (10 times warmer than the heart of the sun) to create a dense plasma that can host a nuclear fusion reaction. Because it's too hot to meet anything solid, it all happens in the air, suspended by a magnetic field inside a vacuum chamber. Subatomic particles swirl creating an important heat, then we simply add water to produce steam that turns some turbines to generate electricity. Eureka.
While the construction of the reactor is now in its seventh year, we know that following the recipe is a little more complex, using a construction planning that can be rightly described as the « next level ».
Higher level construction planning and visualization: 4D immersion
Bentley Systems' L-Lab is an innovation laboratory that discovers innovations of great value for infrastructure, which eventually enter into production and are used by the general public. The development of 4D immersive construction planning, in collaboration with Brigantium Engineering, a specialist in 4D planning and engineering, is a perfect example of providing high-tech and high-value innovations for ITER.
It adds the 4th dimension of time by combining planning with 3D models using SYNCHRO 4D. This information is then accessible via the iTwin Platform APIs and rendered in NVIDIA Omniverse, Unreal Engine and Azure Remote Rendering. Using Unreal Engine allows the rendering to be broadcast on devices such as the Oculus Quest 2, Microsoft HoloLens2 or any other compatible visiocasque such as Varjo, Pico or HTC Vive. This allows a virtual tour of the project with your choice of web browser, workstation, tablet or VR/AR/MR headsets. And, anywhere in your immersive 4D planning, you can pause and browse the project calendar to see when the key components will be installed.
But what does it feel like in 4D immersion? It's amazing. Virtually living such a lunar project, at 1: 1, and going through it in a way that is a second nature is simply something else.
I felt immersed in the whole machine, giving a real idea of how these components are assembled. The details and realism are such that I could focus only on threading a single bolt if I wished. ITER with more than 10 million separate parts, assembled according to tolerances usually of the order of the millimetre, I could spend a lot of time examining the details. Moreover, the tolerances of some components are so low that they require optical metrology – but this is another story. I'm sure I had a smile on my lips throughout the tour, but I had to wait a little longer for my own Eureka moment.
The value of immersive 4D planning for infrastructure design and risk reduction
An essential aspect of the ITER construction process is the pre-assembly of many complex and large components from many parts of the world. With 4D construction planning, digital repeats test the assembly process, refine and perfect the design if necessary – long before an object weighing 1,500 tons weighs on the engine room.
Digital repetitions test the process of assembly, refining and perfecting the design if necessary – long before an object weighing 1,500 tons weighs on the engine room.
Complex projects such as ITER inevitably require changes in the construction plan or improvements that involve many technical and scientific disciplines. With a workforce of thousands, the 4D planning of the project aligns everyone with a common goal or challenge, with the digital environment constantly being updated to identify potential conflicts and changes that are not evident in traditional planning.
Indeed, it is simply not possible to identify the conflicts of crane trajectories using a Gantt diagram or to visualize the density of the work on the site. Here, SYNCHRO 4D brings a major added value to prototype the approach on a real scale experimental digital medium.
It offers extraordinary confidence to all those involved, creating a visual simulation of the plan in advance – rather than simply hoping that the plan will work.
Working on things that matter
I think ITER is going to change the world deal. Fusion energy has the potential to fundamentally change the way we feed the planet, and it could do so in a way that transcends geopolitical boundaries.
Most of us want to work on something that really makes the difference and this work that helps to prove the viability of nuclear fusion as a safe, sustainable and carbon-free energy source to meet all the electrical needs of the Earth, certainly check this box.
Compare digital and real worlds
During a recent visit of the ITER project to France, I went through the facility itself for the first time. In the middle of this engine room the size of a cathedral, I was struck by the familiarity of all this. I had already been here several times before, in the virtual world. It was exactly as I expected.
I felt joy and confidence in knowing that our efforts to connect many digital technologies to my human experience had made this real for me long before I even entered. Eureka!
