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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.
Hosein Talebitadi
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 82 | Number 3 | April 2026 | Pages 675-683
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2025.2521606
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In hybrid reactors where fusion is based on a dense plasma focus (DPF), neutron return from the fission region to the fusion chamber can cause significant wear on the plasma focus device. To mitigate this effect, a shield has been designed based on the difference in neutron reaction cross sections. The shield is designed to be as transparent as possible to high-energy fusion neutrons while relatively preventing the return of neutrons to the fusion chamber. Among the proposed materials, 6Li exhibited the best performance.