The Department of Energy (DOE) announced earlier this week plans to turn a former nuclear weapons storage site in Washington State into a solar project which, upon completion, will generate up to 1 gigawatt of clean energy for an 8,000-acre region.
The DOE will now enter realty negotiations with Hecate Energy to repurpose the Hanford Site, which was established in 1943 as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project during World War II and was decommissioned in 1971. Plutonium produced at Hanford was used in the first atomic bomb test at the Trinity nuclear site in New Mexico and also for Fat Man, the plutonium bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan which ultimately led to the country's surrender.
The project is part of the Biden administration's Cleanup to Clean Energy initiative, which aims to repurpose parts of DOE-owned lands to support America's future clean energy economy.
“Since the beginning of the Biden-Harris Administration, we’ve added nearly 90 gigawatts of solar capacity to the grid - enough to power roughly 13 million homes - and we're building on this historic progress with another massive solar project," said U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. “With today's announcement, DOE is transforming thousands of acres of land at our Hanford site into a thriving center of carbon-free solar power generation, leading by example in cleaning up our environment and delivering new economic opportunities to local communities.”
The Hanford Site later became America's largest environmental cleanup project due to high rates of cancer in the surrounding communities.
Hecate Energy will soon begin realty negotiations with the DOE, which reserves the right to cancel those negotiations and rescind its offer at any time.
“Expanding clean energy generation creates good-paying jobs, protects the environment, and supports healthier communities across the country," said Brenda Mallory, chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
The DOE nor Hecate Energy have confirmed whether the completed solar project will also include a Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) that could be used to power battery-electric passenger or commercial vehicle chargers.
Clean Trucking has reached out to both for comment and will update this space accordingly if necessary.
