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.
Zhi’ao Huang, Huifang Miao, Huai-En Hsieh, Yifen Chen, Ning Li (Xiamen Univ), Chao Guo (China General Nuclear Power Research Inst Co. Ltd.)
Proceedings | Advances in Thermal Hydraulics 2018 | Orlando, FL, November 11-15, 2018 | Pages 379-387
Recently, with the development and application of full-scope level 2 probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) method around the world, severe accident phenomena during shutdown and low power conditions have aroused extensive attention in nuclear industry. And the shutdown severe accident management guideline is claimed to be developed, and the verification of the entry condition is the first consideration in this procedure. Diverse parameters have been monitored to identify their applicability as the alternative shutdown severe accident management guideline (SSAMG) entry conditions based on SBO scenarios in this paper, also the maximum core temperature 1350 K is chosen as the indicator of core damage instead of traditional peak cladding temperature 1024 ? which is thought to be much conservative. The results explain the complex severe accident progression during mid-loop operation in different scenarios and several parameters (i.e. mole fraction of H2 in containment and the mass of noble gas in containment. et.al) are identified to be useful as alternative SSAMG entry conditions in certain scenario. What’s more, the hot leg (in the loop with pressurizer) pipe surface temperature is identified to be the most appropriate parameter to be used as alternative SSAMG when the traditional entry conditions (core exit temperature and the radioactivity in containment) are not available, since it has strong relationship with the maximum core temperature.