ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
Latest Magazine Issues
May 2026
Jan 2026
2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
June 2026
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Getting back to yes: A local perspective on decommissioning, restart, and responsibility
For 45 years, Duane Arnold Energy Center operated in Linn County, Ia., near the town of Palo and just northwest of Cedar Rapids. The facility, owned by NextEra Energy, was the only nuclear power plant in the state.
In August 2020, a historic derecho swept across eastern Iowa with winds approaching 140 miles per hour. Damage to the plant’s cooling towers accelerated a shutdown that had already been planned, and the facility entered decommissioning soon after, with its fuel removed in October of that year. Iowa’s only nuclear plant had gone off line.
Today the national energy landscape looks very different than it did just six short years ago. Electricity demand is rising rapidly as data centers, artificial intelligence infrastructure, advanced manufacturing, and electrification expand across the country. Reliable, carbon-free baseload power has become increasingly valuable. In that context, Linn County has approved the rezoning necessary to support the recommissioning and restart of Duane Arnold and is actively supporting NextEra’s efforts to secure the remaining state and federal approvals.
Technical Session|Panel|Sponsored by HFICD
Tuesday, June 18, 2024|1:00–2:45PM PDT|Jasmine H
Session Chair:
Lee Maccarone (Sandia)
Alternate Chair:
Edward L. Quinn
Session Organizer:
Jamie B. Coble
This panel will summarize an ongoing body of DOE' supported research and development efforts to provide the Nuclear Power industry with implementation and approaches to leverage advanced cybersecurity technologies for safety systems within nuclear power plants (NPPs). Digital technologies play a critical role in ensuring the reliable operation of safety systems in NPPs. Current cybersecurity regulations for operating NPPs, typically result a high reliance on hardened and secure boundaries to prevent adversary access to safety systems. The summarized research efforts detail approaches for leveraging commercial advanced cybersecurity technologies to provide sufficient inherent cybersecurity to reduce reliance on these hardened and secured boundaries. These research efforts consist of experiments that demonstrate novel approaches aimed at reducing functional (e.g., latency, reliability) and licensing impacts to safety systems through application of secure elements and other cybersecurity technologies (e.g, network monitoring, AI, ML) common in other industries. These efforts aim to support all reactor types, including domestic light water reactors, advanced reactors, small modular reactors, and microreactors. Specifically, innovation in the use of advanced cybersecurity technologies to enable several desired advances in safety systems (e.g., remote communications, monitoring, active defense), significant to advanced and small modular reactors. These reactor types will require advanced cybersecurity technologies to provide robust cryptographic mechanisms, intrusion detection and response, to defend the confidentiality and integrity necessary for remote multi-unit monitoring, reduction in sustaining costs, and enable scale-up of operations to meet domestic and international green energy and production goals, for the next generation of safety systems.
Forrest Shriver
Sentinel Devices
Trevor Taylor
Paragon Energy Solutions
Benjamin Karch
Sandia
Ismael Garcia
NRC
To join the conversation, you must be logged in and registered for the meeting.
Register NowLog In
