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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.
Kohki Kumagai, Keitaro Kondo, Satoshi Sato, Saerom Kwon, Kai Masuda
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 82 | Number 4 | May 2026 | Pages 792-804
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2025.2542632
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A series of shutdown dose rate (SDDR) calculations has been performed for the 1.125-MW high-power beam dump following deuteron beam operations in the linear International Fusion Materials Irradiation Facility prototype accelerator (LIPAc). The SDDRs were calculated based on the activation of the beam dump materials caused by nuclear reactions with deuterons and secondary neutrons, which are generated through deuteron interaction in the beam dump.
This study evaluated the SDDR using the actual chemical composition for 5-MeV and 9-MeV deuteron beam operations. The necessity of assessing the SDDR with consideration of the contributions from both deuterons and secondary neutrons has been clarified, as these contributions vary depending on location, deuteron energy, operation time, and cooling times.
The SDDR resulting from Cu(d,x) reactions during 5-MeV deuteron operation decreased relatively quickly with longer cooling times compared to the 9-MeV operation. As the operation time increased, the SDDR tended to decay more slowly due to the increased contribution of long-lived radionuclides. Therefore, the operation scenario must be determined based on the SDDR around the beam dump to ensure safe hands-on maintenance.
Preliminary use of the 5-MeV deuteron beam is considered a preferable method to test the LIPAc’s high-duty–cycle or high-beam–current operation before conducting the 9-MeV deuteron beam operation in order to reduce the SDDR around the beam dump during copper cone hands-on maintenance.
