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.
Muhammad Altahhan, Sandesh Bhaskar, Paolo Balestra, Jason Hou, Maria Avramova (NCSU), Nicholas Smith (Southern Co.)
Proceedings | Advances in Thermal Hydraulics 2018 | Orlando, FL, November 11-15, 2018 | Pages 1248-1256
In this study, a hybrid two-dimensional (2D) / three-dimensional (3D) Liquid Fuel Molten Salt Reactor (LFMSR) core is modelled using the Multi-physics C++ code GeN-Foam (General Nuclear Foam). GeNFoam has three main sub-solvers - for neutron kinetics, thermal hydraulics, and thermal mechanics. A steady state analysis of a simplified 2D LFMSR model has been performed assuming rotational symmetry to cross validate the code with the commercial ANSYS Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) code Fluent. The calculations showed a very good agreement between the two codes allowing moving onto a 3D model simulation. A coupled 3D neutron kinetic and CFD steady state analysis of the 3D LFMSR core has been performed modeling one quarter of the core using the core symmetry to reduce the computational time. The GeN-Foam neutron kinetics sub-solver has been designed to consider also the drifting of the delayed neutrons precursors in LFMSR, a capability not yet implemented in the most of current neutron kinetics codes. The mixed Uranium and Plutonium chloride fuel has been selected in this preliminary study. The calculation results meet the expectations showing that GeN-Foam has all the features necessary for LFMSR design modeling and simulation. The delayed neutrons precursors behavior is as expected - the longer-lived isotopes accumulate near the outlet while the short-lived ones lay at the generation location. The calculated maximum temperature is close to the expected one and the velocity profile is consistent with a low viscosity, high density fluid velocity profile.