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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.
Jae-Yoo Choi, Masoomeh Ghasemi, Min-Ho Chang, Hyunchul Ju
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 76 | Number 6 | August 2020 | Pages 739-748
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2020.1777672
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In this study, a three-dimensional transient metal hydride model is applied to two different depleted uranium (DU) bed designs. One bed is designed to contain 1.86 kg DU for a hydrogen isotope storage capacity of 70 g, and it is loaded with copper foam to enhance internal heat transfer. The other bed is designed to contain 5.26 kg DU for a hydrogen isotope storage capacity of 200 g, and it uses copper fins to enhance internal heat transfer. A numerical study is conducted to analyze the dehydriding characteristics of two different DU bed designs. A parallel computing methodology is used to effectively reduce the computational turnaround time involved for full-scale DU bed geometries. The detailed simulation results show the evolution of temperature and hydrogen-to-metal atomic ratio contours at different hydrogen desorption stages and reveal the different DU dehydriding behaviors of the two DU beds. In sum, the present work elucidates the effects of key bed design parameters and helps identify optimal DU bed design strategies to effectively charge and discharge hydrogen isotopes.