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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.
N. Tsuzuki, M. Chaki (The Inst of Applied Energy), D. T. Nguyen, Y. A. Hassan, K. Vierow Kirkland (Texas A&M)
Proceedings | Advances in Thermal Hydraulics 2018 | Orlando, FL, November 11-15, 2018 | Pages 160-169
Flow behavior of a jet issuing from a steam inlet nozzle of a Terry turbine, which is employed in the RCIC system of BWRs, was observed using PIV techniques. The nozzle has a complicated shape and sufficient data do not exist to predict flow phenomena including exhaust jet flow behavior. Single-phase air jet flow was applied for this experiment. The jet flows 10 mm from the nozzle then impinges on a flat wall which simulates the wall segment between buckets on a turbine wheel. The nozzle outlet pressure was set as 30 psi and 40 psi. Flow behavior and collision behavior was different between the two cases, which implies nozzle outlet pressure of Terry turbine also affects the flow behavior in the turbine. The flow behavior is very important to know how Terry turbine works in BDBE condition or to estimate actual life time of the RCIC system itself. This is the first trial to clarify the behavior and further work will be done in the future.