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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.
A. A. Bykov, A. Yu. Gagarinski, E. S. Glushkov, Yu. A. Kravchenko, N. E. Kukharkin, D. Pavlov, N. N. Ponomarev-Stepnoi
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 145 | Number 2 | October 2003 | Pages 181-187
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE03-A2374
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The paper gives a brief overview of benchmark experiments that have been performed and are being performed at the Russian Research Centre "Kurchatov Institutes" (RRC KIs), satisfy requirements of the International Criticality Safety Benchmark Evaluation Project (ICSBEP), and have been published or will be published in the "International Handbook of Evaluated Criticality Safety Benchmark Experiments."These experiments include critical experiments in water-moderated facilities pertaining to substantiation of reactor physics for VVER-type light water reactors with uranium enrichments varying from natural uranium to ~6.5%; in heterogeneous critical assemblies with a widely varying uranium enrichment (from 5 to 96%) for small nuclear power systems of various applications; in critical assemblies with a uranyl sulfate solution core; and in critical assemblies simulating peculiarities of high-temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTGR), RBMK physics, etc.A list of critical assemblies currently in operation at RRC KI is given. Future experimental programs are briefly described; their implementation, if based on the ICSBEP requirements, will be useful for the international community.Using RRC KI as an example, it is demonstrated that Russian nuclear centers maintain capabilities for carrying out a wide range of new critical experiments, including international cooperation in this area.