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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.
Duck-Hoi Kim et al.
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 64 | Number 2 | August 2013 | Pages 126-130
ITER | Proceedings of the Twentieth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (TOFE-2012) (Part 1), Nashville, Tennessee, August 27-31, 2012 | doi.org/10.13182/FST13-A18066
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Since the decision of blanket redesign by 2007 ITER design review, the blanket system is being developed in the framework of Blanket Integrated Product Team (BIPT) composed mainly of ITER Organization (IO) and procuring parties. Korean Domestic Agency (KODA) is mainly contributing to the design and development of blanket Shield Block (SB). In particular, KODA is supporting the design activities including electromagnetic, thermo-hydraulic and thermo-mechanical analyses to complete the final design of blanket shield block. For the manufacturing of a blanket shield block conventional fabrication techniques based on drilling, milling and welding of stainless steel forged blocks have been adopted. As a consequence of the manufacturing feasibility study, key fabrication techniques to be verified beforehand have been identified and successfully developed in collaboration with related industries. The pre-qualification program of the fabrication and testing of Full Scale Prototype (FSP) is in progress. Until now the material development of 316L(N)-IG stainless steel forging has been successfully completed, and the fabrication of FSP is on-going. Even though the procurement of blanket First Wall (FW) was withdrawn at the 9th meeting of the ITER Management Advisory Committee, the participation of the 2nd pre-qualification program of EHF (Enhanced Heat Flux) FW small scale mock is being valid for securing core engineering technologies. At present the fabricated mock-ups are waiting for high heat flux test with the Electron Beam (EB) gun test facility being newly built in Korea. This paper provides the current status of design and relevant R&D activities of the blanket system to secure key technologies and to fulfill our promise to ITER project.
