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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.
S. S. Ananyev, A. Yu. Dnestrovskij, A. S. Kukushkin, A. V. Spitsyn, B. V. Kuteev
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 76 | Number 4 | May 2020 | Pages 503-512
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2020.1718855
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The fuel cycle (FC) model FC-FNS is used for the calculation of hydrogen isotope flows in the fuel systems of the DEMO-FNS fusion neutron source (FNS) based on a tokamak with parameters R/a = 3.2 m/1 m, B = 5 T, Ipl = 4 to 5 MA, PNBI = 30 MW, РECR = 6 MW, and deuterium-tritium fusion power Pf = 40 MW. The FC-FNS model includes joint simulation of the gas, solid-state, and plasma flows of the fuel mixtures in the areas of the core and near-wall plasma when neon admixture is injected into the divertors. The basic principles of particle balance formation in the plasma and FC systems are described in the paper. In the process of fueling mode optimization, the requirements for productivity of the key FC systems containing the largest amount of T have been formulated. The FC configuration with the minimum tritium reserve (<2 kg) and the shortest processing time is selected.