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Fusion Science and Technology
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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.
Mohamed E. Sawan, Lai La A. El-Guebaly, Gregory A. Moses, William F. Vogelsang.
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 4 | Number 1 | July 1983 | Pages 79-92
Technical Paper | Blanket Engineering | doi.org/10.13182/FST83-A22777
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A detailed three-dimensional Monte Carlo nuclear analysis is presented for the heavy-ion-beam-driven reactor HIBALL. Neutron target interactions leading to neutron multiplication, spectrum softening, and gamma production are included in the model A 0.66-m-thick blanket cooled by Pb83Li17 reduces the radiation damage in the HT-9 ferritic steel first wall to 2.7 dpa/full power year, allowing it to last the whole life of the plant. The overall tritium breeding ratio and the overall energy multiplication are 1.25 and 1.27, respectively. The four reactor cavities in the HIBALL power plant yield a total thermal power of 10 200 MW(thermal).
