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August 24–27, 2026
Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
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Latest News
NRC issues draft EA/FONSI for Duane Arnold restart
Efforts by NextEra Energy to restart the Duane Arnold nuclear power plant as early as 2029 continue to move forward with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's preliminary environmental assessment and determination that the restart would have no significant environmental impacts.
On Thursday, the NRC posted a draft environmental assessment and a finding of no significant impact for the Palo, Iowa, facility; the Federal Register notice was published on Monday. The Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Dominance Financing is a cooperating agency on the draft EA, as the DOE is considering providing financial assistance to the restart project.
M. Harb, D. Leichtle, B.-Y. Kim, J.-P. Martins, J. G. van der Laan, J. Bergman, E. Polunovskiy, A. Serikov
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 79 | Number 3 | April 2023 | Pages 305-319
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2022.2109368
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
One of the advances in the test blanket module program within the ITER project in the last few years concerned the evolution of the pipe forest (PF) and bioshield plug (BP) designs. In support of the design phase, nuclear analyses to assess several responses in the fusion neutronics environment inside the port interspace (PI) with the existence of the evolved PF and BP are deemed essential. Nuclear analyses were commenced using the new PF and BP with developing the neutronics models and performing preliminary assessment of the radiation fields and shutdown dose rate (SDDR) in the PI. In this paper, the results of a full suite of nuclear analyses are discussed, which covers more configurations and radiation sources, in two plasma operational modes: on and off. For the plasma-on mode, different shielding options were examined. The results show a clear benefit of combining the installation of shielding panels on the PF enclosure with those in the BP “dogleg,” through which the pipes penetrate to the port cell area. For the plasma-off mode, the SDDR was assessed from different sources: activated components and residual LiPb layers in pipes after drainage. As maintenance operations are foreseen during the lifetime of the facility, the SDDR was also assessed for access conditions, open BP doors, and transport conditions, with PF extracted in the gallery.