By the end of next year, the Duane Arnold Nuclear Power plant in Palo will shut down for good. And the decommissioning of that plant is slowly happening right now.

NextEra Energy Resources purchased the plant from Alliant Energy. It's Iowa's only nuclear power plant. NextEra has to provide a plan to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission that includes how it will clean up and make the plant safe after it closes.

"They'll shut down the reactor and remove all fuel from the reactor," Matthew Learn, a specialist in decommissioning, said. "At that time they have some options whether they will immediately remediate the site and remove radio active material from the site or whether they will put the site into what's called safe store which is a long term storage of the plant."

Closing the plant means 500 jobs will be lost. NextEra says some of those people will likely stay on to fulfill the plant's clean-up and future termination activities.