ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
Latest Magazine Issues
May 2026
Jan 2026
2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
June 2026
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
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.
S. Beetham, J. Capecelatro
Nuclear Technology | Volume 209 | Number 12 | December 2023 | Pages 1977-1986
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2023.2178251
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Turbulence in two-phase flows drives many important natural and engineering processes, from geophysical flows to nuclear power generation. Strong interphase coupling between the carrier fluid and disperse phase precludes the use of classical turbulence models developed for single-phase flows. In recent years, there has been an explosion of machine learning techniques for turbulence closure modeling, though many rely on augmenting existing models. In this work, we propose an approach that blends sparse regression and gene expression programming (GEP) to generate closed-form algebraic models from simulation data. Sparse regression is used to determine a minimum set of functional groups required to capture the physics, and GEP is used to automate the formulation of the coefficients and dependencies on operating conditions. The framework is demonstrated on homogeneous turbulent gas-particle flows in which two-way coupling generates and sustains carrier-phase turbulence.