ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
Latest Magazine Issues
May 2026
Jan 2026
2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
June 2026
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
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.
George Danko, Davood Bahrami (Univ of Nevada, Reno), Craig Imrie (Hatch)
Proceedings | 16th International High-Level Radioactive Waste Management Conference (IHLRWM 2017) | Charlotte, NC, April 9-13, 2017 | Pages 767-777
This paper discusses the specific needs for a design tool for ventilation and cooling of the deep geologic repository (DGR) facilities during construction, emplacement and potential re-entry of the access tunnels. Two examples are shown for two different designs of the DGR, in a typically cold and a hot geographic area. An advanced numerical model is used with the capabilities of simulating Airflow, Temperature, Humidity and Contaminant (ATHC) distributions in a dynamically changing environment, previously qualified for Yucca Mountain conceptual DGR ventilation studies. This paper focuses on the results, showing that the monthly, weekly and even daily temperature variations in the outside weather may significantly affect the air temperature around the workers in the tunnels of the DGR. The main conclusion of the study is that it is highly advisable to include the thermal history in the thermal model to reasonably predict the working temperature and humidity conditions in long drifts in the DGR, ventilated by the seasonally-varying intake temperature.