LOUISVILLE, KY.— The Department of Energy expects to start making early selections for carbon-free energy projects on federal nuclear sites within “the coming days or weeks,” a DOE Office of Environmental Management executive said here Tuesday.
The announcement of clean power project selections will come before DOE has the signed realty agreements in hand, Robert Seifert, the cleanup branch’s acting boss for infrastructure and regulatory policy, told the Radwaste Summit.
The actual realty agreements should be reached by the end of the 2024 fiscal year, on Sept. 30, Seifert said. “DOE is just leasing the land,” and the really hard work comes after the selection is made, Seifert said.
The selected developers will still need to work out plans for engineering, design, construction and permits for carbon-free power projects, Seifert said.
Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm announced DOE’s Cleanup to Clean Energy program in July 2023. The picks will be made by a DOE selection board, Seifert added. The five nuclear sites earmarked for the first tranche of the clean power program are the Hanford Site in Washington state, the Idaho National Laboratory, Nevada National Security Site, the Savannah River Site in South Carolina and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.
The program to tap unused buffer land at DOE sites is an outgrowth of President Joe Biden’s proposal to make federal installations largely free from reliance on fossil-fuel electric generation by about 2030.
