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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.
General Chair:
Bill Vesely (NASA (retired), USA)
Program Chair:
Carol S. Smidts (Professor, Ohio State University)
Honorary Chair:
Richard Denning (Battelle Energy Institute (Retired), USA)
Publications Chair:
Vaibhav Sinha (The Ohio State University, USA)
Michigan Ohio Section Representative:
John Greenwood (First Energy Corporation , USA)
PSA 2021 Senior Advisory Boards:
Tunc Aldemir (The Ohio State University, USA)
Paul Amico (Jensen Hughes, USA)
Steve Arndt (US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, USA)
Ron Boring (Idaho National Laboratory, USA)
Bob Budnitz (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (retired.), USA)
Matilde D’Arpino (The Ohio State University, USA)
Enrique Droguett (University of Chile, Chile)
Fernando Ferrante (EPRI, USA)
Katrina Groth (University of Maryland at College Park, USA)
Huyn Gook Kang (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA)
Pierre-Etienne Labeau (Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium)
Ming Li (US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, USA)
Zahra Mohagheh (Zahra Mohagheh, University of Illinois, USA)
Poong Hyun Seong (KAIST (retired), Korea)
Abdollah Shafieedazeh (The Ohio State University, USA)
Curtis Smith (Idaho National Laboratory, USA)
Prabhakar Varde (Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, India)
Jeffrey Woollard (The Ohio State University, USA)
Local Support and Logistics:
Yunfei Zhao (The Ohio State University, USA)
Timothy DeFranco (The Ohio State University, USA)
Gulcin Sarici Turkmen (The Ohio State University, USA)