The Duane Arnold Energy Center (DAEC) was Iowa's only nuclear power plant. It is located on a 500-acre (200 ha) site on the west bank of the Cedar River, two miles (3.2 km) north-northeast of Palo, Iowa, USA, or eight miles (13 km) northwest of Cedar Rapids.
DAEC entered operation in February 1975. On August 10, 2020, the plant cooling towers were damaged during a derecho and repairs were deemed uneconomical as the plant was scheduled for closure in October 2020.
The majority owner and operator is NextEra Energy Resources (70%). The Central Iowa Power Cooperative owns 20% and the Corn Belt Power Cooperative owns 10%.
In January 2018, NextEra Energy announced that it was unlikely that DAEC would operate beyond 2025. The plant was given a 20-year license extension to 2034 but considered closing after Alliant Energy, which contracts for 70% of the plant's electricity, announced it would instead be buying electricity from less expensive sources such as wind and natural gas. In July 2018 the expected closure date was amended to October 2020. The unit made power for the last time on 10 August 2020 due to storm damage from the August 2020 Midwest derecho. An NRC report of the incident—what nuclear safety experts called "a close call"—found that containment of a radiological release to the environment might not have been complete, because "the vacuum drawn in secondary containment by the standby gas treatment system was slightly below the technical specification (TS) limit."
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