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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.
Global 2026
Chief Executive Officer
Curio
Edward (Ed) McGinnis, CEO at Curio, is an accomplished senior U.S. government and industry executive with over 30 years of proven experience in the fields of nuclear energy, national and international nuclear energy policy and technical cooperation, national and international nuclear security and nonproliferation, science and technology policy and programmatic activities, international relations, and global energy policy and cooperation. Ed's experience includes serving as president and CEO of CURIO, at the White House as the Executive Director of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), as Assistant Secretary (Acting) and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE); leading DOE’s international nuclear energy policy and cooperation for over 10 years as Deputy Assistant Secretary; serving as the founding Chair of the 65-nation International Framework for Nuclear Energy Cooperation (IFNEC) and its predecessor Presidential initiative – the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP); as founding Director of the Secretary of Energy’s Global Nuclear and Radiological Threat Reduction Task Force, and serving over 10 years in nuclear nonproliferation, including countering the global threat of nuclear weapons proliferation and serving in DOE’s Office of Foreign Intelligence.
