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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.
Technical Session|Office of Nuclear Energy Funded Research (NEUP and UNLP Programs)
Saturday, April 5, 2025|9:00–10:20AM MDT|Gran Quivera 1
Session Chair:
Tyler D. Newitt (INL)
Alternate Chair:
Cece Bell
Session Organizer:
Ashley Machado
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Design and Analysis of Gas Sparging Mass Transfer Experiment for Molten Salt Applications
9:00–9:20AM MDT
Andrew Hutsell (Young Members Group), Ryan P. McGuire (Virginia Commonwealth Univ.), Ethan M. Villarreal (Virginia Commonwealth Univ.), Jeremy Lopez (Virginia Commonwealth Univ.), Lane B. Carasik (Virginia Commonwealth Univ.)
Paper
Experimental Investigation Regarding the Determination of Microbubble Geometry in Molten Salt Sparging Environments
9:20–9:40AM MDT
Ethan M. Villarreal (Virginia Commonwealth Univ.), Andrew Hutsella (Virginia Commonwealth Univ.), Lane Carasik (Virginia Commonwealth Univ.)
Automating Spectroscopic Analysis of Lithium Isotopic Composition with Convolutional Neural Networks
9:40–10:00AM MDT
Jason P. Clifford (NCSU), Lauren A. Kohler (NCSU), Julianna M. White (NCSU), Nusrat Karim (NCSU), Elizabeth Kautz (NCSU), Xu Wu (NCSU)
Development of a Graphite Pebble Test Bed for Experimental Validation of Pebble Flow Simulations
10:00–10:20AM MDT
Ethan H. Nicolls (Univ. Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), Ming Fang (Univ. Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), Sohaib S. Malik (Univ. Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), Timothy Grunloh (Univ. Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), Caleb S. Brooks (Univ. Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), Angela D. Fulvio (Univ. Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)
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