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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.
Le Tang, Hong Ran, Lijun Cai, Yuncong Huang, Jilai Hou, Binbin Song
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 78 | Number 3 | April 2022 | Pages 199-210
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2021.1978742
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The vacuum vessel (VV) of the China Fusion Engineering Test Reactor (CFETR) performs many functions, but its main function is to provide a high-quality, ultra-high-vacuum environment for plasma operation. The electromagnetic load acts on the VV and its ports during a plasma vertical displacement event (VDE). This paper adopts a new simulation method of the plasma current during transient electromagnetic analysis. The distribution of the electromagnetic load on the VV shells, the upper ports, the equatorial ports, and the lower ports is entirely displayed. The structural stress under the electromagnetic load during a VDE was obtained by electromagnetic-structural coupling. According to the structural analysis, the results indicate that the VV can meet the structural strength and stiffness requirement.
