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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.
NUCLEAR AND EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES FOR SPACE (NETS-2024) PLENARY SPEAKER
Randy Bell is a senior project leader at The Aerospace Corporation working in space nuclear power and propulsion. Prior to Aerospace, he served in DOE and NNSA in nuclear engineering and nuclear nonproliferation from 1991 through 2020, during this time he led research programs developing technical methods to detect and characterize weapons proliferation. Mr. Bell was the manager of Space and Remote Sensing Systems where he oversaw several small satellite programs and many advanced airborne remote sensing efforts. He headed NNSA’s Office of Nuclear Detonation Detection where he was responsible for production of operational satellite payloads as well as seismic and atmospheric detonation detection technology. Subsequently he was the Director of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty’s International Data Centre where he led operation of the multinational nuclear test detection system and coordinated nuclear test monitoring activities among all Treaty member countries. Before DOE, Mr Bell was a US Navy Fast Attack Submarine Officer and continued in the reserves in numerous assignments related to national space systems. He has master’s degrees in physics from George Mason University, and computer science from Johns Hopkins University, and a B.S. in mathematics from the University of Rochester.
Last modified April 16, 2024, 8:46am MDT
