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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.
Koichi Okuno (Hazama-Ando Technical Research Institute), Ken-ichi Kimura (Fujita Corp.), Mikihiro Nakata (MHI Nuclear Development Co.), Tomohiro Ogata (Mitsubishi Heavy Industries), Yukio Sakamoto (Atox Co.), Erina Matsuyama (Toshiba Energy Systems and Solutions ), Masahiro Taniguchi (Taisei Corp.), Ken-ichi Tanaka (Institute of Applied Energy), Koji Oishi (Japan Environment Research Co.), Satoshi Takeo (Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy), Satoshi Ishikawa (ITOCHU Techono-Solutions Corp.), Hidenori Kawano (Atox Co.), Masahiro Yoshida (Nuclear Safety Technology Center), Toshio Amano (ITOCHU Techono-Solutions Corp.), Kazuaki Kosako (Shimizu Corp.), Yoshihiro Hirao (National Maritime Research Institute), Toshinobu Maenaka (Takenaka Corp.)
Proceedings | ICRS 14/RPSD 2022 | Seattle, WA, September 25-29, 2022 | Pages 153-155
