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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.
S. M. Yakout
Nuclear Technology | Volume 189 | Number 3 | March 2015 | Pages 294-300
Technical Paper | Reprocessing | doi.org/10.13182/NT14-39
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Radioactive element separation is of particular interest in nuclear technology. For this purpose, batch experiments were carried out in order to find the best separation conditions of uranium [U(VI)] and thorium [Th(IV)] from aqueous solution using rice straw activated carbon. The influence of pH and contact time on selective adsorption of U(VI) and Th(IV) was investigated. The results indicate that the velocity of these species from liquid phase to the surface of carbon is rapid enough. The reaction rate was fast, requiring only a short contact time of 40 min for U(VI) and 100 min for Th(IV). Sorption reaches maximum at pH 4 for Th(IV) and at pH 5.5 for U(VI). U(VI) and Th(IV) can be separated by the judicious controlling of pH and contact time. They can be separated from each other at pH 4 with different contact time [Th(IV) at lower time and U(VI) at 200 min]. Studies were conducted to examine the change in the adsorption behavior of U(VI) and Th(IV) on adsorbent as a function of employing different complexing agents of mineral and organic acids that are important in industrial and environmental processes, including hydrochloric, nitric, acetic, sulfuric, and phosphoric acids at 0.1M concentration. Acetic acid enhances U(VI) and Th(IV) uptake compared to mineral acids. These procedures may be useful in the separation of U(VI) and Th(IV) from natural or industrial samples containing these elements.
