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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.
T. Muroga, T. Tanaka, Zaixin Li, A. Sagara, Dai-Kai Sze
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 52 | Number 3 | October 2007 | Pages 682-686
Technical Paper | The Technology of Fusion Energy - Tritium, Safety, and Environment | doi.org/10.13182/FST07-A1568
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
One of the critical issues of Flibe/V-alloy blanket with REDOX control by Be is a large tritium inventory in V-alloy structures. Among the possible solutions to this issue would be to control REDOX not by Be but by addition of MoF6 or WF6 enhancing the reaction from T2 to TF. The present study investigated feasibility of this procedure by thermodynamic and neutronics calculations. Using the blanket dimensions of Force Free Helical Reactor (FFHR), tritium inventory in V-alloy structure and Flibe were estimated based on the calculated equilibrium partial pressures of T2 and TF in various cases of REDOX control by MoF6 or WF6. Also carried out were neutronics examinations for the impact of Mo or W doping in the blanket. The results showed that the tritium inventory in the blanket area would be less than 100g at the TF level of 0.1 and 1 ppm in Flibe with addition of WF6 and MoF6, respectively. WF6 doping is far more advantageous than MoF6 doping for low activation purposes.
