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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.
A. Iiyoshi, N. Kobayashi, T. Mutoh, S. Nakatani, S. Okada, M. Sato, H. Takano, Y. Tanahashi, N. Yamamoto, A. Fujita, Y. Kino
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 79 | Number 8 | November 2023 | Pages 1023-1038
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2023.2204996
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Until the pure fusion ages come true, present nuclear power is a crucial option if humanity takes aim for a zero net carbon society by the 2050s. A thorium subcritical reactor activated and controlled by muon-catalyzed fusion (MuCF) is an alternative until the completion of the pure fusion reactors. This proposal consists of two main technologies: a steady-state MuCF and the thorium subcritical fission reactor with cascaded neutron multipliers. It will be an environmentally friendly quantum energy source built only by the present science and technologies in a few decades.
