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2026 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
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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.
April 29, 2022|10:00–11:30AM (11:00AM–12:30PM EDT)
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Nek5000 is an open-source, highly scalable, high-order, spectral-element-based computational fluid dynamics code. It combines the accuracy of spectral methods with the flexibility of the finite element method. It has been used for a wide range of applications in nuclear energy. It has the capabilities to perform DNS, LES, and unsteady RANS simulations using either an incompressible or low-Mach model. Its high-fidelity capability with the LES model has been well documented with consistent strong performance in international benchmarks. This tutorial will guide users in downloading and compiling Nek5000 as well as setting up and running a simple case.
In order to follow along, attendees should have access to a computer with a Unix based operating system and basic familiarity with using the terminal along with compatible FORTRAN 77 and C compilers installed with a working MPI wrapper. Either ParaView (paraview.org) or VisIt is necessary for visualization of results. We strongly recommend that attendees are familiar with either tool and have one installed prior to the workshop.
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