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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.
Y. Chikhray, S. Askerbekov, Y. Kenzhin, Y. Gordienko, E. Ishitsuka
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 76 | Number 4 | May 2020 | Pages 494-502
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2020.1718854
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The investigation of the mechanisms and dynamics of hydrogen isotopic interaction with solid surfaces (metals, ceramics, graphites, eutectics) in temperature and pressure ranges is important not only for the correct prediction of each isotope’s evolution but also for substantiation of the safe operation of hydrogen-facing structural materials. The interaction of the hydrogen isotopes mix with the surface of solid metal or liquid eutectics is a complicated multistage H-D-T-O-solid interacting process depending on material property, environment, and the solid’s surface parameters. To better understand the mechanisms of hydrogen isotopes interchange at a solid surface and to identify the limiting stages in the sorption-desorption processes, a reactor experiment of neutron irradiation was conducted with lithium-containing eutectics as tritium-generating media under the external flow of hydrogen. This work presents the model and results of its application to fitting the experimental results of tritium yield from the lithium-lead eutectics Pb83Li17 under thermal neutrons irradiation at the IVG.1M reactor in Kazakhstan. The elaborated model and the approach used were also applied to the simulation of high-temperature gas-cooled reactor graphite corrosion in water vapors.