Abstract. Remote replacement of the ITER divertor will be required several times during the life of the machine. To facilitate its regular exchange the divertor is assembled in the vacuum vessel in 54 cassettes, each being introduced into the vessel through one of three equispaced handling ports. The remote replacement of plasma facing components in the hot-cell allows the cassette bodies to be re-used and to minimise the amount of activated waste. An R&D project was conceived during the ITER EDA to demonstrate the feasibility of divertor remote maintenance operations. Two test platforms have been set up and are being used to evaluate equipment and procedures. Following a short description of the test facilities set up at ENEA Brasimone, Italy, this paper reports the test results which confirm the overall feasibility of the proposed maintenance and refurbishment schemes.
IAEA 2001