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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.
Chiaki Kino, Yoshihiro Morita, Masao Chaki (The Inst of Applied Energy)
Proceedings | Advances in Thermal Hydraulics 2018 | Orlando, FL, November 11-15, 2018 | Pages 201-211
Reactor core isolation cooling system (RCIC) is designed to operate using saturated steam extracted from a main steam line. On the other hand, RCIC in Unit-2 of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant was activated before the tsunami hit and continued to operate under two phase flow conditions during the accident. When RCIC continuously operates without control by electric power, reactor water level would reach the main steam line resulting in turbine efficiency degradation and subsequent RCIC stop. The mechanism for RCIC of Unit-2 to have continuously operated under such two phase flow conditions is still unclear. Currently, a project is progressing to understand the true operating limitations of RCIC system under beyond design basis event. The Institute of Applied Energy is developing the new RCIC system model for the SAMPSON code in the project. The present paper proposes a trial model for RCIC system under two phase flow conditions. The model takes the effect of quality and pressure on turbine efficiency into consideration. SAMPSON calculation based on the model could reproduce qualitatively RPV pressure behavior of Fukushima Daiichi Unit-2 accident. However there are many uncertainties, such as water temperature of S/P, isentropic efficiency, and so on, so the model will be improved based on experiment and CFD results planned in the project.