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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.
J. O. C. Imrie, D. Witow (Hatch), A. Lee, A. Živkovi? (NWMO)
Proceedings | 16th International High-Level Radioactive Waste Management Conference (IHLRWM 2017) | Charlotte, NC, April 9-13, 2017 | Pages 437-445
The management of nuclear waste products in Canada is undertaken by the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO). The Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) is implementing Adaptive Phased Management (APM), Canada’s plan for the long-term management of used nuclear fuel. The APM approach encompasses centralized containment and isolation of the used fuel in a Deep Geological Repository (DGR) in a suitable rock formation, such as crystalline rock or sedimentary rock, in an informed and willing host community. A conceptual adaptive layout design that can adapt to the structural anisotropy of the rock mass as expected in a hypothetical crystalline geosphere is being considered. This layout will incorporate significant flexibility in addressing geoscientific, safety and engineering aspects as details become available during progressive site specific study stages and construction.
This paper presents the conceptual design requirements, preliminary engineering analyses, and results for this adaptive layout. The overall layout configuration considers the functionality of the:
• Ventilation strategy.
• Establishment of flow-through ventilation.
• Traffic flow management.
• Underground central services area (CSA).
• Completion of the demonstration rooms during initial construction.
• Completion of the first panel of the placement rooms prior to operations.
• Worker safety and preliminary thoughts on emergency responsiveness.
The results of this study conclude that there is significant flexibility of the layout to adapt to the geosphere as it becomes progressively defined; the ventilation system and traffic flow can be configured for different scenarios through the DGR operations; and, potential worker exposure for defined emergency events is minimized with this adaptive layout.
