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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.
Yudai Urabe, Kenichi Hashizume, Teppei Otsuka, Kan Sakamoto
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 76 | Number 4 | May 2020 | Pages 392-397
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2020.1712992
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Tritium permeability through FeCrAl-oxide-dispersion-strengthened (ODS) ferritic steel containing Ce oxides (Ce-ODS steel) was measured at temperatures ranging from 373 to 623 K. Some of the Ce-ODS steel specimens were oxidized by means of an autoclave treatment at 563 K for 30 days to examine the effect of the surface oxidized layer on the tritium permeability. The tritium permeability obtained for nonoxidized specimen was consistent with that for other common ferritic steels and FeCrAl ferritic steel. For the oxidized specimen, the surface oxide layer suppressed the apparent tritium permeability. The permeability for the oxidized specimen also depended on the atmosphere of the downstream in the permeation experiment: An atmosphere containing water vapor yielded lower tritium permeability compared with a reductive one.
