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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.
Alice Ying, Haibo Liu, Mohamed Abdou
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 64 | Number 2 | August 2013 | Pages 303-308
Divertor and High-Heat-Flux Components | Proceedings of the Twentieth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (TOFE-2012) (Part 1), Nashville, Tennessee, August 27-31, 2012 | doi.org/10.13182/FST64-303
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Available data and mathematical formulations concerning tritium transport in the FW/Divertor with tungsten and beryllium as plasma facing materials were implemented in the commercial code COMSOL Multiphysics. The goal is to develop a CAD-based multiphysics modeling capability so that FW/Divertor temperature and geometric features can be readily taken into consideration while tritium permeation to the primary coolant in a prototypical PFC can be more realistically addressed. This development began with the simulation of ion implantation experiments, validated against existing laboratory experimental results. Analysis shows that with ITER FW where Be is used as the plasma facing material, the low operating temperature, erosion, and the dwell time greatly hinder tritium bulk diffusion, permeation, and inventory accumulation. However, under DEMO high-temperature operating conditions, tritium can quickly diffuse through tungsten to structural material and reach a steady state inventory after a relatively short time. Additionally, its permeation to the coolant can be reduced when the Soret effect is considered. The findings and challenges of developing a 3-D predictive capability for tritium transport in a FW/Divertor PFC are discussed.