The Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup office would mostly stay hands-off off any clean energy generation that comes to the Hanford Site in Washington state, an official said Tuesday.
DOE’s Hanford office will be “limited to being a good landlord” federal manager Brian Vance said Tuesday at a meeting of the Hanford Advisory Board.
About 30 organizations, many of them with expertise in carbon-free electricity generation, participated in Hanford’s September Cleanup to Clean Energy industry day. The DOE is putting together a draft request for proposals for clean power projects, which could include anything from solar to nuclear, at the former plutonium production facility.
Vance said the Hanford DOE Office of Environmental Management will provide support to this department-wide effort.
The Hanford Site already has several tenants, Vance said in the presentation. Current tenants listed are the Manhattan Project National Historical Park, the U.S. Navy burial ground for empty submarine reactor compartments, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory and Energy Northwest’s Columbia Nuclear Generating Station.
Speaking of electric infrastructure, Vance said the Bonneville Power Administration is replacing or refurbishing several onsite transmission towers. The new towers won’t actually be synchronized with the grid until May 2025 to coincide with a refueling at the Energy Northwest power plant.
