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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.
O. A. Fedorchenko, I. A. Alekseev, S. D. Bondarenko, T. V. Vasyanina
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 76 | Number 3 | April 2020 | Pages 341-346
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2020.1712007
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper presents further investigation of the liquid phase catalytic exchange (LPCE) process on the LPCE-3 column (50-mm inner diameter and 2-m height) of the EVIO pilot plant. The characteristics of the column filled with alternating layers of RCTU-3SM hydrophobic catalyst and stainless steel spiral-prismatic packing have been studied at a catalyst/packing volume ratio of 2:1 and compared to a ratio of 4:1. The EVIO-5 computer model is used for the column performance evaluation (as before) but this time the mass transfer coefficient for phase exchange Bx is not fixed. Due to the unequivocal separation of the catalytic and phase exchange with the help of the EVIO-5 code, the comparison of catalyst activity given by mass transfer coefficient Kc has been made for the experiments at two different catalyst/packing volume ratios. The column performance has also been expressed by the value of the height-equivalent-to-theoretical-plate average along the column. Some experience concerning the control of an LPCE column operating at the mode “with independent flows” is discussed.