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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.
David Garrido (ENSA), Steven Ross (PNNL), Paul E. McConnell, Willaim Uncapher (SNL), Philip Jensen, Nicholas Klymyshyn (PNNL), Sylvia Saltzstein, Ken Sorenson (SNL), Brady Hanson, Ralph Best (PNNL), William Shust (Objective Engineers), Jeff L. England (SRNS), Russ Walker, Ruben Pena (Transportation Technology Center, Inc.)
Proceedings | 16th International High-Level Radioactive Waste Management Conference (IHLRWM 2017) | Charlotte, NC, April 9-13, 2017 | Pages 72-78
The objective of the shock and vibration testing program is to quantify mechanical loads on fuel assembly components that would occur during normal conditions of transportation (NCT) by various modes. This information will guide materials research and establish a technical basis for review organizations such as the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). A significant body of experimental and numerical modeling data exists to quantify loads and failure limits applicable to NCT rail transport, but the data are either out-of-date relative to present day railroad operations and equipment, or are based on assumptions that can only be verified through experimental testing. The summary presented herein represents a collaboration among many stakeholders to define the path for acquiring new data that is needed to validate the assumptions of previous work, validate modelling methods that will be needed to evaluate the mechanical responses of used nuclear fuel that will be transported in the future in large rail casks, and inform material test campaigns on the anticipated range of stresses that will be imposed on nuclear fuel cladding. This work will include full scale testing of a used nuclear fuel cask, cradle, rail car, and surrogate fuel assemblies and will encompass intermodal transloading, heavy-haul truck transport, barge transport, ocean going vessel transport, and rail transport as well as captive track tests. The ultimate goal of this testing will be to close some of the existing knowledge gaps related to the mechanical loads that would be imposed on used nuclear fuel under NCT and inform the experiments and analysis efforts