Here is a look at how far five Department of Energy nuclear-weapon sites have come in the year since the agency announced a drive to repurpose underutilized land for clean energy generation.
DOE’s Cleanup to Clean Energy Project launched in July 2023. It was DOE’s way of meeting President Biden’s (D) Executive Order calling on agencies to achieve 100% clean electricity by 2030.
The five sites to participate in the program are the Hanford Site in Washington state, Idaho National Laboratory, Nevada National Security Site, Savannah River Site in South Carolina and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. Between them, DOE has identified up to 70,000 acres of land for potential development, the agency has said. About half that much land is mentioned in the first round of solicitations.
As of early August, Savannah River looked closest to closing a deal.
The South Carolina site by the Georgia line hopes to wrap up negotiations with a potential solar power developer by mid-August, Edwin Deshong, deputy manager for DOE’s Office of Environmental Management at Savannah River, told the site’s Citizens Advisory Board meeting last week.
In July, DOE selected Ameresco as a second developer of a 75-megawatt solar project at Savannah River. In June, DOE selected Stellar as developer of a 75-megawatt solar project at the site. Contracts are contingent upon successful completion of lease negotiations.
On the other side of the country, on July 25, DOE announced it is going to start realty deals with Hectate for 8,000 acres of land on the Hanford Site for a solar project with potential to produce one-gigawatt of clean energy. A request for qualifications was put out in March 2024. During negotiations, the DOE can cancel and rescind their selection for any reason.
In the sun-rich desert of Nevada, DOE in June announced the selection of Estuary Power LLC as developer for the Nevada National Security Site. Estuary will now seek to negotiate a realty agreement for the 2,400 available acres at the Nevada National Security Site for a project to generate at least 200 megawatts of carbon-free energy.
Developers NorthRenew Energy Partners and Spitfire were selected in early June for the Idaho National Laboratory, the first selection of all the sites. NorthRenew proposes to install photovoltaic solar along with battery storage to generate more than 300 megawatts on about 2,000 acres at the Idaho site. Spitfire intends to install upwards of 100 megawatts of photovoltaics and battery storage on about 500 acres.
The 400 megawatts planned in Idaho would conceivably be enough electricity to power 70,000 homes, DOE said.
The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in southeastern New Mexico, an area teeming with oil and gas exploration, was still in the early phases of Cleanup to Clean Energy as of early August. Carbon-free project proposals were due in late June for developing up to 9,000 acres of surface land at the site, WIPP is DOE’s only deep-underground repository for transuranic waste.