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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.
K. Russ, R. Jimenez, E. Marin, F. Elsner, W. Sweet
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 79 | Number 7 | October 2023 | Pages 778-785
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2023.2190292
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Polystyrene (PS) capsules produced by General Atomics are useful to inertial confinement fusion work. Contact scratches caused by collisions between container asperities and PS capsules and beads are a prominent defect arising during the fabrication process, and reducing them would improve surface quality. This study analyzed various containers for the curing and washing stages of PS bead and capsule production. For the curing stage, plastic bottles were found to have lower scratch frequency and severity than glass flasks, indicating that they may be a better alternative. For the washing stage, plastic or Gel-Pak washing containers demonstrated no reduction in scratch frequency when compared to glass washing containers.