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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.
Xilong Tong, Xiaokang Zhang, Jia Li, Shanliang Zheng
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 82 | Number 4 | May 2026 | Pages 814-828
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2024.2448414
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Monte Carlo method is commonly applied in fusion neutronics to simulate particle transport calculations due to its ability to handle complex geometries and perform accurate calculations with continuous-energy cross-section data. FLUKA, a versatile particle transport calculator specializing in radiation shielding analysis, features an interactive modeling interface, Flair. FLUKA seems capable of calculating key fusion neutronics parameters, such as neutron energy spectra, material activity, and the shutdown dose rate (SDDR) in a single step, indicating its potential for fusion neutronics analysis.
This study uses the ITER SDDR experiment T-426 as a benchmark case. Besides the calculation results for the neutron flux and material activation between FLUKA and other commonly used tools that showed significant discrepancies, the calculated-to-experiment (C/E) values for the SDDR calculated by FLUKA after 7 days of shutdown ranged from 1.03 to 1.35, while the C/E values from other methods typically fall between 0.8 and 1.2. Although FLUKA is able to calculate various parameters of interest to fusion neutronics, it still requires further validation and development to better simulate neutron transport for fusion application.