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Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
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.
M. C. Huang, C. D. Hu, C. C. Jiang, Y. Z. Zhao, Y. H. Xie, J. L. Wei, S. Y. Chen, Q. L. Cui, J. J. Pan, Y. L. Xie
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 75 | Number 4 | May 2019 | Pages 330-337
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2018.1557985
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Negative ion beam source test equipment, currently under construction at Institute of Plasma Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, is a prototype of a radio-frequency (RF) ion source for neutral beam injection. An extraction grid power supply (EGPS) for the RF ion source is utilized to extract negative ions. To acquire the output of the EGPS and assure its safe operation, an interlock protection system has been designed. The system meets the requirements of anti-interference signal transmission and management of fast protection in order to minimize adverse consequences. The system takes care of breakdowns occurring during normal operation. All the required functions are implemented by hard-wired circuits, so the response time of fault protection can be less than . This technical note describes the rationale of the isolated transmission and protection functions and presents the implementation of functions in the detailed design. System performance during the experimental tests is described, with emphasis on demonstration of the protection.
