The ITER project (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) deals with a large-scale Tokamak fusion reactor, which is currently in the construction phase in the French city of Cadarache. The aim of the project is to investigate the behaviour and the stability of an amount of plasma suitable for a large-scale Tokamak fusion reactor. Together with DONES and ITER, this project creates the basis for the planned DEMO (DEMOnstration fusion power plant) project that will first supply the electrical network. Apart from many European countries, many other countries such as Japan, USA, China, South Korea, India and Russia, contribute to the project.

Although the construction phase has already begun, there are many subsystems which require further design work and investigations from the point of view of logistics and remote handling. Since 2014, we work on the evaluation of different concepts for the “Diagnostic Port Plug”. With special consideration of criteria for assessing the remote handling during the maintenance phase, the design should be improved in such a way that, on the one hand, the downtimes are minimized and, on the other hand, the maintenance operations can take place with an as low as possible failure occurrence. Once a single or a few concept options have been agreed, a specific optimization of the design is performed with the help of logistic modelling and simulation of the corresponding maintenance processes.