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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.
Salman M. Alshehri (Missouri S&T/KACST), Ibrahim A. Said (Alexandria Univ/Rice Univ), Muthanna H. Al-Dahhan (Missouri S&T/KACST/Alexandria Univ/Rice Univ), Shoaib Usman (Missouri S&T)
Proceedings | Advances in Thermal Hydraulics 2018 | Orlando, FL, November 11-15, 2018 | Pages 670-681
Multiphase Reactors Engineering and Applications Laboratory (mReal) at Missouri S&T has designed, developed, and tested a dual channel module. The facility represents a scaled down prismatic modular reactor to mimic pressurized conduction cooldown (PCC) accident scenario for the prismatic modular reactor with a reference to High-Temperature Test Facility at Oregon State University (OSU-HTTF). The current facility was constructed to investigate a plenum-to-plenum (P2P) natural circulation heat transfer through two channels for different coolants (working fluid) at high operating pressure of 413.7 kPa. The natural circulation heat transfer in terms of temperature fields and heat transfer coefficients across the core of current facility (i.e., channels) has been investigated at constant outer surface temperature of upper plenum and downcomer channel (278.15 K) under nonuniform heating center peaking step (approximating cosine shape) using an advanced fast response heat transfer technique. Results showed that a net inner surface temperature gain along the riser channel by 84, 95, 98 and 150K for carbon dioxide, nitrogen, argon, and helium respectively. Also, an average increasing of centerline temperature along the riser channel is observed by 110, 133, 151 and 204 K for carbon dioxide, nitrogen, argon and helium, respectively. Furthermore, the current results show a common heat transfer coefficients trend for all coolants along the riser channel; the local heat transfer coefficient decrease with axial location from the entrance (Z/L = 0.044) until a minimum value at Z/L = 0.279 and after this position, the local heat transfer coefficient starts to increase again till Z/L= 0.591 (laminarization effects). And finally, heat transfer coefficient decrease from Z/L= 0.591 till the exit into the upper plenum. However, it was observed that heat transfer coefficients for helium was higher than all other gases for the entire riser channel and remained positive for much higher heights. In the laminarization effects region (0.279