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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.
Lorenzo Fortunato, Andres Felipe Lopez Loaiza, Giulio Albertin, Enrico Fragiacomo
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 82 | Number 3 | April 2026 | Pages 551-560
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2025.2521604
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
New calculations of the time evolution and isotopic composition for a network of nuclear reactions breathe new life into an old idea in nuclear fusion, burning solid room-temperature 6Li deuteride (6LiD) with neutrons. Modern-day compilations of nuclear cross sections are nowadays available, and we use them to predict the full course of networks of thermonuclear reactions, reexamining the Jetter (n + 6Li) and Post cycles (p + 6Li), named after U. Jetter and R. F. Post, that offer great prospects for energy production in devices not based on plasma confinement. We present ideal calculations, i.e. not including the energy loss due to the stopping power, and more realistic calculations that include the Bethe-Bloch formula. We find that a significant amount of energy can, in principle, be generated.