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Fusion Science and Technology
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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.
B. Vezzoni, M. Salvatores, F. Gabrielli, A. Schwenk-Ferrero, V. Romanello, W. Maschek, G. Forasassi
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 61 | Number 1 | January 2012 | Pages 167-173
Fission | Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Emerging Nuclear Energy Systems | doi.org/10.13182/FST12-A13415
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In order to investigate the impact of nuclear energy introduction in a country with a fossil fuel based energy mix, several scenarios have been compared in terms of fuel cycle needs (resources and infrastructure) and wastes produced.As case study, the Italian situation (represented by ca. 300 TWhe-y of electricity needs in 2007 and by no nuclear energy production at present) has been selected. However, the obtained results could be extrapolated to other countries by means of scale factors.For the reference scenario, the introduction of Gen.III+ Light Water Reactors and once-through fuel cycle has been considered. Under the hypothesis that only the plutonium produced in the country will be available and used for a possible transition to a fast fleet, the introduction of different types of fast reactors (a 600 MWe lead-cooled and two 1500 MWe sodium-cooled systems with different breeding characteristics) and of a more sustainable fuel cycle (closed or partially closed) have been compared. The adoption of fast systems enables to reduce of 50% the uranium consumption and to favorably impact the cycle back-end by reducing the Pu inventory in the cycle, and by reducing the long term waste radiotoxicity and heat load in a repository.A parametric study has been carried out in order to deal with the systematic uncertainties connected to scenario investigations.
