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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.
C. Wang, B. Lu, J. Liang, H. Zeng, X. Y. Bai, Y. L. Chen, M. Huang
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 73 | Number 4 | May 2018 | Pages 539-544
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2017.1396149
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A pillbox-type radio-frequency window for lower-hybrid current drive power transmission of 3.7 GHz for 200 kW/2 s is designed. The relative permittivity and the loss tangent of several domestic materials—alumina, boron nitride, and sapphire—are exactly compared by the rectangular cavity perturbation method, and finally, the sapphire is chosen as the window medium. The reflection coefficient of the optimized window can reach 55−dB at 3.7 GHz simulated by high-frequency simulation software, and the peak temperature rise can be limited at 20°C with maximum thermal stress of 1.7 MPa by thermal and mechanical analysis. In the high-power test, 221 kW/3 s energy passes the welded window.