NextEra Energy Resources has confirmed that it is actively pursuing the recommissioning process of its Duane Arnold Energy Center in Palo, having recently filed notice with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to request a licensing change.
During the company’s Q4 2024 earnings call Jan. 24, NextEra Energy chairman, president and chief executive officer John Ketchum said the plant could reopen “as early as the end of 2028.”
“Duane Arnold plant is really in good shape,” he said, according to a transcript posted by The Motley Fool. Going on to state that the plant’s reactor is in “very good condition” and that the only damage that the facility sustained during the 2020 derecho was to the cooling tower.
The 615-megawatt Duane Arnold Energy Center, Iowa’s only nuclear plant, which opened in 1974, ceased operations following the August 2020 derecho that brought winds of up to 140 mph to the Corridor, causing heavy damage to the plant’s cooling towers, according to NextEra Energy officials.
The plant was already scheduled to be decommissioned in October 2020 after its main customer, Alliant Energy, paid $110 million in 2018 to exit its power purchase agreement with the plant several years early.
According to a statement released by NextEra in 2020, post-derecho inspections of the plant revealed “extensive damage to Duane Arnold’s cooling towers,” which were used to cool steam after it exited the plant’s turbine. Officials stressed that there was no damage to infrastructure used to cool critical nuclear components, but noted that repairing the cooling towers would not be feasible before its October decommissioning date, leaving the plant incapable of restarting.
The plant, now owned by NextEra Energy, is currently in the midst of a 60-year decommissioning period.
Since the plant’s shutdown, NextEra has launched construction of two utility-scale solar projects near the former plant, following a Linn County review process that included extensive, sometimes contentious exchanges between NextEra officials and area landowners.
The company’s filing of a notice with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to request a licensing change is being described by officials as “an important first step” in establishing the regulatory pathway to restore the facility’s operating license and potentially restart plant.
This is a developing story.
