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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
Sebastian Corbisiero is the Senior Program Manager at Idaho National Laboratory leading space fission reactor development for the national laboratories. He joined INL to support the space reactor effort in 2020. Previously, Sebastian spent 15 years working on advanced reactor design and fuel system development at Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory where he also served as a nuclear engineer on Project Prometheus. In addition, he spent three years at General Dynamics as a manager of systems engineering supporting missile control systems. Sebastian holds a degree in nuclear engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Last modified April 17, 2024, 2:00pm MDT
