"A wall of clouds had poured in from the west, swallowing Palo, Iowa, in darkness. "It was like it was pitch black night," the senior systems engineer at the plant recalled. Then, the alarm began to sound. Within seconds of the storm hitting the plant, 130-mile-per-hour winds had severed all six of its external power lines, triggering an automatic emergency shutdown. Backup diesel generators roared to life, and large control rods slid into the reactor core to halt the fission reaction driving the plant's energy production."
""It wasn't until we went outside afterwards that we realized that the cooling towers were gone," Lokenvitz recalled. Twelve water-cooling towers once watched over the plant like two rows of soldiers, releasing steam from water used to cool the nuclear reactor. The storm toppled them. The derecho, a thunderstorm characterized by high wind gusts spanning several hundred miles, had swept across the Midwest, causing widespread power outages and catastrophic damage to buildings, trees and millions of acres of crops."
A 2020 derecho produced 130-mile-per-hour winds that severed all six external power lines at the Duane Arnold nuclear plant, triggering an automatic emergency shutdown. Backup diesel generators engaged, control rods halted the fission reaction, and safety systems vented excess heat for hours while the reactor core remained hot. The storm toppled all twelve water-cooling towers. After 45 years of operation, the plant was shut down and already scheduled for decommissioning, creating little time or financial incentive to repair storm damage. Plans to reopen the site to power nearby data centers raise questions about vulnerability to extreme weather and resilience of power and cooling infrastructure.
Read at WIRED
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