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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.
Fuqiang Wang, Jian Chen, Hong Cui, Alin Ji, Dong Xie, Zhaofu Zhang
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 78 | Number 3 | April 2022 | Pages 243-252
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2021.1978743
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The coating technology of tungsten on carbon/carbon (C/C) composite is an important issue for fusion experimental device components. In this study, an interlayer of chemical vapor deposition SiC between tungsten coating and C/C substrate was used. A tungsten coating 320 μm thick was successfully deposited on SiC-coated C/C substrate by inert plasma spray. The microstructure, roughness, and constituents of W-SiC-C/C composite materials were investigated using a scanning electron microscope, energy dispersive X-ray spectroscope, X-ray diffractometer, and atomic force microscope. The tungsten coating structure that may prevent crack propagation essentially consisted of a stacked lamellar columnar microstructure and particle cluster microstructures. The interfaces between the tungsten and SiC coating and between the SiC coating and the C/C were clear. The SiC interlayer acts as a barrier for carbon and tungsten diffusion. The thermal conductivity of the system was calculated by the mixture rule, which was 47.33 to 82.35 W/(m·K). The thermal expansion coefficient of W-SiC-C/C was negative at room temperature and up to 1.5 × 10−6/K for elevated temperature.