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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.
H. Xu, H. Huang, J. Walker, F. H. Elsner, M. P. Farrell
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 73 | Number 3 | April 2018 | Pages 408-413
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2017.1396180
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Be:B films were explored as a possible ablator material for use in inertial confinement fusion target capsules. It was found that Be:B forms an amorphous structure near the eutectic composition of 11 to 12 at. % B. It is believed that having an amorphous ablator should be useful in suppressing Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities during compression of the target. As the composition is moved away from the eutectic, an amorphous-to–columnar structure transition was more likely to be observed after some finite thickness of amorphous material had been deposited. Microstructural analysis indicated that this transition involved the nucleation of nanocrystal structures within the amorphous matrix. This nanocrystal nucleation is believed to be due to supersaturation of the dopant atom in the host. An efficient packing analysis is also presented in an effort to explain the most favorable amorphous composition of 11 to 12 at. % B doping observed.