The paper reports on latest developments for the ITER Ion Cyclotron Heating and Current Drive system: imminent acceptance tests of a prototype power supply at full power; successful factory acceptance of candidate RF amplifier tubes which will be tested on dedicated facilities; further design integration and experimental validation of transmission line components under 6MW hour-long pulses. The antenna Faraday shield thermal design has been validated above requirements by cyclic high heat flux tests. R&D on ceramic brazing is under way for the RF vacuum windows. The antenna port plug RF design is stable but major evolution of the mechanical design is in preparation to achieve compliance with the load specification, warrant manufacturability and incorporate late interface change requests. The antenna power coupling capability predictions have been strengthened by showing that, if the plasma scrape-off layer turns out to be steep and the edge density low, the reference burning plasma can realistically be displaced to improve the coupling.

The base plasma heat load on the ITER first wall results from the projection of the plasma scrape off layer power profile onto the shaped surface of the first wall panels. The actual heat load on the first wall is larger than the base heat load, due to enhancement factors such as design approximations, manufacturing and assembly errors, and deviations to the ideally toroidal magnetic field configurations. The heat load increase is accounted for through penalty coefficients, ranging individually from a few percent to 50%. The probabilistic combination of individual penalty coefficients to give a global penalty coefficient is presented in the paper. The global penalty coefficient ranges from 1.37 to 2.44, depending of the first wall row and plasma phase.

The lifetime of the beryllium armor of the ITER first wall is evaluated for normal and off-normal operation. For the individual events considered, the lifetime spans between 930 and 35×106 discharges. The discrepancy between low and high estimates is caused by uncertainties about the behavior of the melt layer during off-normal events, variable plasma operation parameters and variability of the sputtering yields. These large uncertainties in beryllium armor loss estimates are a good example of the experimental nature of the ITER project and will not be truly resolved until ITER begins burning plasma operation.

The ITER First Wall is being redesigned to address a number of issues identified during the 2007 design review. One of the main improvements concerns the handling of parallel plasma heat loads. The design must be optimised for maximum leading edge protection with acceptable power flux distribution, which is achieved by shaping the First Wall panels. The conceptual design presented in the paper can accommodate both inboard and outboard limiter plasmas for a total power in the discharge of 7.5MW at 7.5MA and allows the abandonment of the original dedicated port limiters.