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Conference Spotlight
2026 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
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Nuclear Science and Engineering
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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.
Innovations Student Competition
April 16, 2024|1:00–2:00PM (2:00–3:00PM EDT)
Available to All Users
The Innovations in Nuclear Energy Research & Development Student Competition (INSC) recognizes published graduate and undergraduate students. Through the award process, the INSC provides winning students with opportunities to present their published work to the broader nuclear energy community. This webinar serves as an opportunity for students who were unable to present at the ANS Winter Conference to show their work to a wider audience.
The webinar features the following two presentations:
Grayson Gall BioGrayson completed his Bachelor of Science in nuclear engineering with minors in computer programming and music studies at North Carolina State University (NCSU). He is continuing his education at NCSU with advisors Dr. Steven Shannon and Dr. Amanda Lietz. His research focusses on the development of computational plasma physics applications in the MOOSE framework. These tools will then be used to explore plasma material interactions in a variety of low temperature plasma applications and in the edge of fusion plasmas. In the future, Gall plans on continuing to expand the field of computational plasma physics through the development of opensource software that utilizes advanced methods and GPU acceleration.
Ezgi Gursel BioEzgi is a third-year PhD student at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She is studying Industrial and Systems Engineering. She received her BS and MBA from Southwestern Oklahoma State University. She currently works as a Graduate Research Assistant. Her current research focuses on physics-informed anomaly detection and human error detection.
