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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.
Byeonggeon Bae, Taeho Kim, Byongjo Yun (Pusan National Univ)
Proceedings | Advances in Thermal Hydraulics 2018 | Orlando, FL, November 11-15, 2018 | Pages 949-952
Distributions of local droplet parameters such as the droplet fraction, droplet velocity, and droplet diameter were measured using a single optical fiber probe (S-OFP) sensor in a horizontal pipe with an inner diameter of 40 mm and a length of 5 m. Flow condition covers the liquid superficial velocity ranging from 0.01 m/s to 0.015 m/s, and the gas superficial velocity ranging from 27.5 m/s to 32 m/s. Asymmetric distributions of local droplet parameters were observed in the direction of the vertical center line of the test section due to the effect of gravity. The one-dimensional droplet mass flow rate was calculated from distributions of the local droplet fraction and droplet velocity. In this study, the expected maximum height of interfacial wave was considered as a boundary between the droplet and the continuous liquid. In order to validate the droplet mass flow rate measured by the S-OFP sensor, liquid film extraction method was also applied simultaneously in the measuring plane of a test section. It was found that the two methods showed similar results for the droplet mass flow rate under the low liquid flow condition. Whereas, the difference of the droplet mass flow rate between the two methods was large in the high liquid superficial velocity condition. It was resulted by the fact that the liquid film was not completely removed at the liquid film extraction section.