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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.
J. A. Goetz, M. W. Bongard, S. J. Diem, J. K. Peery
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 82 | Number 1 | January-February 2026 | Pages 56-63
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2025.2456893
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Pegasus-III is a solenoid-free, low-aspect-ratio spherical tokamak (ST) focused on studying nonsolenoidal plasma initiation techniques. It will be equipped with multiple helicity injection (HI) systems and a 28-GHz gyrotron-based system for electron Bernstein wave (EBW) and electron cyclotron (EC) heating and current drive. Microwave injection can provide heating during HI to reduce losses from resistive dissipation. Microwave heating and current drive techniques are also candidates for noninductive plasma initiation, ramp up, and sustainment on their own. STs are well-suited for EBW heating and current drive because a large volume of the plasma is overdense. During low-density startup, ST plasmas can remain accessible to EC waves for heating and current drive. To aid in the design of this microwave system, a synthetic aperture microwave imaging diagnostic is being fielded for the first exploration of EBW emission measurements from HI-generated plasmas. This diagnostic will be used to identify effective operational windows for EBWs. Modeling using the GENRAY code has been performed to assess the viability of these EBW mode conversion and EC methods. Modeling results indicate that both methods can be successfully used in Pegasus-III plasmas.