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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.
Yuri Igitkhanov, Boris Bazylev, Lorenzo Boccaccini
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 75 | Number 7 | October 2019 | Pages 642-646
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2019.1610291
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The impact of the edge-localized modes (ELMs) on the tungsten divertor erosion by taking into account the screening effect of vapor shielding is analyzed for DEMO steady-state operation condition. The evaluation of tungsten ablation, energy radiation, and absorption by divertor plate due to a single ELM impact is calculated by using a model of vapor shielding inserted in the MEMOS code. The effect of repetitive ELM impact and the tungsten melt layer formation is described by using the model of W monoblock with a compliance layer of Cu alloy between the W and EUROFER water cooling tube.
It is shown that the vapor plasma shielding results in saturation of the single ELM energy accumulated by the divertor plate and that the saturation level depends on the ELM duration. The ablation thickness can reach about 0.01 µm. The total number of ablated particles is rather critical for the shielding formation, and the lifetime of the divertor plate depends strongly on this effect.
