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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
Guest ScientistLos Alamos National Laboratory
US Air Force Nuclear Research Officer (retired)
Richard (Dick) Malenfant joined the critical experiments facility at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in January 1961 following a tour of active duty in the US Air Force as a nuclear research officer. He retired from full-time employment in 1996 and continues his association with the laboratory as a Guest Scientist. His special interests include the history of the Manhattan Project, nuclear propulsion, criticality safety, and radiation protection and shielding. Perhaps no program better illustrates the idiom that indicates the importance of paying attention to the smallest aspects of a task than the application of nuclear energy to rocket propulsion. Even now, after 65 years of association with programs such as Kiwi, Rover, Phoebus, Dumbo, and NRX; he is in awe of the small aspects of the nuclear propulsion programs that had to be overcome. Radiation heating rates that would melt tungsten, pumping 350 pounds of liquid hydrogen per second at 1/14th of the density of water, and the reaction of hot hydrogen and graphite to produce methane are illustrative of the small aspects of the problems that are often forgotten and will discuss them further.
Last modified November 6, 2023, 1:06pm MST
