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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.
Jing Wu, Yajing Chen, Jian Liu, Pengcheng Guo, Lei Xue, Lieming Yao
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 79 | Number 5 | July 2023 | Pages 578-591
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2022.2162793
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper studies electromagnetic (EM) loads during major disruptions and vertical displacement events by introducing a two-dimensional spatiotemporal plasma current attenuation filament profile derived from the DINA code. Three-dimensional geometry models of the HL-2M tokamak are established by ANSYS, including the plasma-facing components (PFCs), the vacuum vessel (VV), poloidal magnetic field/central solenoid magnetic field coils, and divertor. Eddy currents are induced with plasma current decay and flow into the PFC components. The interaction between eddy currents and magnetic fields generates enormous EM forces and torques. The halo current also flows into the VV and divertor components from the inner and outer target plates, the demo plate, and the cassette box. The halo current–induced EM loads are the most substantial forces in the inward radial and upward vertical forces for the VV and divertor. The simulation results provide a reference for the design and safety assessment of the magnetically confined tokamak HL-2M.