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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.
T. Bernat, C. Castro, A. Pasternak, J. Sin, O. Stein, N. Petta
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 73 | Number 2 | March 2018 | Pages 119-126
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2017.1406236
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The University of Rochester Laboratory for Laser Energetics Laser Direct-Drive 100-Gbar Campaign requires fuel capsules with specified limits on the number of localized surface defects in the 0.1- to 1-µm range. Schafer Livermore Laboratory has applied techniques of bright-field conventional imaging and charge-coupled-device–based dark-field microscopy as a possible method of characterizing the number and sizes of local particle-like defects on these capsules. Through simple experiments, we are able to correlate measured localized light-scattering levels with sizes of spherical polystyrene test particles. We have developed an engineering concept for whole-surface capsule scans based on quantitative dark-field microscopy as well as conventional imaging microscopy. This system and technique will be particularly useful during capsule development and capsule handling (transport, assembly, etc.) investigations.
