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NRC issues draft EA/FONSI for Duane Arnold restart
Efforts by NextEra Energy to restart the Duane Arnold nuclear power plant as early as 2029 continue to move forward with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's preliminary environmental assessment and determination that the restart would have no significant environmental impacts.
On Thursday, the NRC posted a draft environmental assessment and a finding of no significant impact for the Palo, Iowa, facility; the Federal Register notice was published on Monday. The Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Dominance Financing is a cooperating agency on the draft EA, as the DOE is considering providing financial assistance to the restart project.
John Sheffield, Stanley L. Milora
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 70 | Number 1 | July 2016 | Pages 14-35
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST15-157
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The original generic magnetic fusion reactor paper was published in 1986 for deuterium-tritium reactors. This update describes what has changed in 30 years. Notably, the construction of ITER is providing important benchmark numbers for technologies and costs. In addition, we use a more conservative neutron wall flux and fluence. But, these cost-increasing factors are offset by greater optimism on the thermal-electric conversion efficiency and potential availability. In addition, today’s inflation and interest rates are low, leading to a cost of money well below that used in the original study. The main examples show the cost of electricity (COE) as a function of aspect ratio and neutron flux to the first wall. The dependence of the COE on availability, thermoelectric efficiency, electrical power output, and the present day’s low interest rates is also discussed. Interestingly, at fixed aspect ratio there is a shallow minimum in the COE at neutron flux of 2.5 MW/m2. The possibility of operating with only a small COE penalty at even lower wall loadings (to 1.0 MW/m2 at larger plant size) and the possible use of niobium-titanium coils are also investigated. It should be emphasized that the variation in the COEs is important rather than their absolute values.