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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.
Benjamin T. Taczak, Livia Casali, Son Quang, G. Ivan Maldonado, Kuan Lee
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 82 | Number 1 | January-February 2026 | Pages 319-330
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2025.2525028
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In this contribution, we present a new package for creating fixed-source neutron source profiles for OpenMC from both simulated and experimental tokamak plasma states. Realistic fusion neutronics simulations ultimately require information on plasma equilibrium, plasma transport, and a realistic source geometry. In this work, a new flexible tool is presented that allows the user to input detailed plasma states to create OpenMC neutron sources for fixed-source problems. The toolkit accepts radially and poloidally varying plasma density and temperature profiles from either experimental or simulated plasma states. Either D-T or D-D reaction rates may be used in the case of predictive or experimental simulations, respectively. This process provides a realistic neutron source that is intrinsically coupled to tokamak plasma physics parameters.
We demonstrate the framework using a source modeled after an experimental neutron profile from the Mega Ampere Spherical Tokamak–Upgrade (MAST-U). An additional feature of this coupling is the ability to self-consistently convert the Monte Carlo tallies using total volumetric neutron production instead of relying on a measured total neutron production rate typical of these simulations. Experimentally informed and flexible source definitions for neutronics modeling are crucial to streamlining the design process of any future fusion pilot plant studies.