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Fusion Science and Technology
August 2026
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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.
S. W. Haan, D. S. Clark, S. H. Baxamusa, J. Biener, L. Berzak Hopkins, T. Bunn, D. A. Callahan, L. Carlson, T. R. Dittrich, M. J. Edwards, B. A. Hammel, A. Hamza, D. E. Hinkel, D. D. Ho, D. Hoover, W. Hsing, H. Huang, O. A. Hurricane, M. A. Johnson, O. S. Jones, A. L. Kritcher, O. L. Landen, J. D. Lindl, M. M. Marinak, A. J. MacKinnon, N. B. Meezan, J. Milovich, A. Nikroo, J. L. Peterson, P. Patel, H. F. Robey, J. D. Salmonson, V. A. Smalyuk, B. K. Spears, M. Stadermann, S. V. Weber, J. L. Kline, D. C. Wilson, A. N. Simakov, A. Yi
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 70 | Number 2 | August-September 2016 | Pages 121-126
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST15-244
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Experiments and analysis in the 3 years since the 2012 Target Fabrication Meeting have resulted in significant improvement in understanding of the requirements for high-performance layered implosions. Three issues have been identified that significantly degrade the performance of the implosions as they were originally configured for National Ignition Facility experiments: capsule support system, time-dependent radiation asymmetry, and transverse oxygen nonuniformity in the glow discharge polymer (GDP) ablator. Analyses suggest that the shortfalls in these three areas can explain the degraded performance of the National Ignition Campaign implosions. We present the status of work toward curing these three problems in the standard GDP ablator/gold hohlraum configuration as they affect target fabrication priorities. We also summarize the prospects for alternate ablators that might reduce these degradation mechanisms.