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Conference Spotlight
2026 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
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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 OPD
Wednesday, June 19, 2024|10:00–11:45AM PDT|Jasmine C
Session Chair:
Andrew Whittaker (SUNY Distinguished Professor, University at Buffalo)
Alternate Chair:
Chandrakanth Bolisetti (Senior Scientist, Idaho National Laboratory)
Session Organizer:
For the United States to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, we will need to deploy nuclear power plants at an unprecedented speed and scale. Construction of nuclear power plants has been challenging in the recent decades - schedule delays, cost overruns, among other factors, impeded the widely-anticipated "nuclear renaissance" and damaged industry confidence. Civil works amount to almost half the capital costs of nuclear power plant built in the past and are a major contributor to overruns. Without advances and civil engineering and construction methods of nuclear power plants, advanced nuclear construction will face the same barriers and urgent, large-scale deployment will be almost impossible. The goal of this panel session is to bring attention to the importance of civil engineering of nuclear plants and shed some light on ongoing development and much needed technological advances in this topic.
Chandu Bolisetti
INL
Benjamin Kosbab
Senior Principal, Simpson Gumpertz & Heger
Enrique Lopez
Co-founder, Boston Atomics
Huy Tran
Principal Lead Engineer, TerraPower
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