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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.
Zongbiao Ye, Wenyao Yang, Lei Shu, Zhijun Wang, Qiancheng Liu, Qiang Yan, Jianjun Wei, Kun Zhang, Fujun Gou
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 76 | Number 2 | February 2020 | Pages 157-162
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2019.1704596
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The corrosion behavior of Type 316L stainless steel in stagnating liquid Li under an elevated-temperature environment was investigated using a scanning electron microscope and an energy dispersive X-ray detector and self-designed laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy. A nonuniform and cell-like branched structure separated by distinct boundaries was observed, and a porous and rugged corroded layer was formed on the surface of the substrate after 500 h exposing 350°C liquid Li. This showed that the intensity of the Cr element on the superficial corroded sample decreased significantly when the depth reached ~2.8 μm and then was gradually restored in the range of ~5.6 μm. Meanwhile, the intensity of the Li element revealed consistent reduction to zero at ~4.0 μm. This study disclosed element transfer and penetration along a depth in the corrosion process between the liquid lithium and steel matrix.