RH divertor maintenance - the divertor test platform

The ITER divertor assembly consists in 60 cassettes located in the bottom r egion of the Vacuum vessel. Because of erosion and damage, their replacemen t is expected to be required eight times during the machine lifetime. The c assettes will be remotely withdrawn from the vessel through dedicated ducts and they will be transported to a hot cell for refurbishment. To demonstra te the feasibility of the withdrawal operations, and to optimise the mainte nance scenario and the handling equipment design, a test facility has been set-up at the ENEA Research Centre of Brasimone (Italy), i.e. the divertor test platform (DTP) that allows to simulate, in full scale, all handling op erations inside the vacuum vessel. This paper describes the objectives, tes t programme, layout, test results and future activities of the DTP. (C) 200 0 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.