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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|Panel|Sponsored by DESD
Monday, November 16, 2020|1:00–3:10PM EST
Session Chair:
Yoon I. Chang (ANL)
Alternate Chair:
William D. Magwood IV (OECD Nuclear Energy Agency)
Session Organizer:
Jan B. Van Erp (consultant)
Staff Producer:
Daryl Rizzo (American Nuclear Society)
Anthropogenic CO2 is a major cause of climate change, according to scientific consensus. Energy derived from fossil fuels is one of the main sources of atmospheric CO2. This session will address means for reducing energy-related CO2 emissions with emphasis on economic aspects. This panel session will feature the following speakers: 1) Keynote speech by William Magwood, Director General of OECD’s Nuclear Energy Agency : Costs of Decarbonization -- The Role of Nuclear Energy in the Energy Transition ; 2) Luc van den Durpel, President of Nuclear 21 : Energizing Sustainability -- Nuclear’s Unique Contribution; 3) Bill Sacks, co-author with Gregory Meyerson of forthcoming book entitled “Dyseconomies of Scale: Capitalism, the Green New Deal, and Nuclear Power” : Wind and Solar Energy Cannot Scale: The Importance of EROI ; 4) Yoon Chang, Argonne Distinguished Fellow, Argonne National Laboratory : Improving Fuel Recycling Economics to Enable Large-Scale Nuclear Power Deployment
Bill Sacks
Consultant
Luc DURPEL
Nuclear-21 Consulting
Yoon Chang
ANL
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