A day anticipated by many across the nuclear community has finally arrived: NextEra Energy has officially announced its plans to restart Iowa’s only nuclear power plant, the Duane Arnold Energy Center.

Gary Adkins

Subsequent license renewal (SLR) authorizes nuclear power plants to operate for an additional 20 years beyond the 60 years of the initial license (years 1–40) and the first license renewal (years 41–60). NUREG-2191, Generic Aging Lessons Learned for Subsequent License Renewal (GALL-SLR), and NUREG-2192, Standard Review Plan for Review of Subsequent License Renewal Applications (SRP-SLR), were issued in July 2017 and provide guidance for generic evaluation of plant aging management programs and reviews of SLR applications, respectively, by Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff.

The first SLR application was submitted to the NRC for review in January 2018. A total of 10 additional SLR applications addressing 20 operating units have been submitted to the NRC. Nine operating units have been approved by the NRC, and 13 units are under review. These 22 units do not have any issues, including operating experience issues, precluding them from achieving a renewed license.

A pair of bills working their way through the Iowa statehouse aim to promote nuclear energy projects in the state—in part by changing how the plants would be regulated and funded.

Iowa’s lone nuclear plant may soon see new life as NextEra Energy takes a step toward relicensing the Duane Arnold nuclear power plant.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has denied plans for Talen Energy to supply additional on-site power to an Amazon Web Services’ data center campus from the neighboring Susquehanna nuclear plant in Pennsylvania.

The Duane Arnold nuclear power plant in Iowa could see new life, according to NextEra Energy chief executive officer John Ketchum.

“There would be opportunities and a lot of demand from the market if we were able to do something with Duane Arnold,” Ketchum said on Wednesday this week during the company’s second-quarter earnings call.

Last April, Entergy had to close its Indian Point nuclear plant. That’s despite the plant’s being recognized as one of the best-run U.S. nuclear plants. That’s also despite its 20-year license extension process having been nearly completed, with full support from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

This closure was due in large part to opposition by antinuclear environmental groups. These groups also mobilized existing negative public opinion on nuclear energy to get politicians to oppose the plant’s license extension. Another factor is unfair market conditions. Nuclear energy doesn’t get due government support—unlike solar, wind, and hydro—despite delivering clean, zero-emissions energy.

Nuclear power plants around the world generated 2,553 TWh of electricity in 2020, a drop of 104 TWh from 2019’s total, according to World Nuclear Performance Report 2021. The report was released last week by the U.K.-based World Nuclear Association.

Nuclear generation declined in Africa, North America, and Western and Central Europe, rose in Asia (but by much less than in recent years), and remained largely unchanged in Eastern Europe, South America, and Russia, the 68-page report states.

Sama Bilbao y León, WNA director general, notes in the report’s preface that although the nearly 4 percent decline “would be an unequivocal disappointment” in any other year, “in 2020, with overall electricity demand falling by around 1 percent and nuclear reactors increasingly being called upon to provide load-following support to the increased share of variable renewable generation, the resilience and flexibility shown by the global nuclear fleet tell a very positive story.”

When on May 7, 2013, the Kewaunee nuclear power plant in rural Wisconsin was shut down, it took with it more than 600 full-time jobs and more than $70 million in lost wages, not including temporary employment from refueling and maintenance outages. Taking into account indirect business-to-business activity, the total economic impact of the closure of the single-unit pressurized water reactor was estimated to be more than $630 million to the surrounding three-county area.

Osterberg

An op-ed published in The Gazette, a Cedar Rapids, Iowa–based newspaper, laments the early closure of the Duane Arnold nuclear power plant in 2020. Author David Osterberg, a former Iowa state legislator, contrasts what happened in Iowa with Illinois and three other states, whose governments "decided that heading off climate damage and the loss of good union jobs was worth keeping nuclear plants there alive." The economic calculation in Duane Arnold's case treated its electricity the same as that from coal or natural gas plants. However, Osterberg states that “when it comes to global warming and local air pollution, they aren’t the same.”

Duane Arnold is to shut down in October. Photo: Wikimedia Commons/AsNuke

NextEra Energy is estimating that it will cost just over $1 billion to decommission its Duane Arnold Energy Center over a period of 60 years, including spent fuel management and site restoration costs, according to a post-shutdown decommissioning activities report (PSDAR) and a decommissioning cost estimate the company submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in April. The NRC, with publication in the June 19 Federal Register, is requesting comments on the Duane Arnold PSDAR until October 19.