The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is using the sites of old power nuclear power plants to be repurposed into solar power plants—and it has chosen a second site as part of the government’s “Cleanup to Clean Energy” initiative.
And the federal government has been repurposing old nuclear power plants into solar power plants.
The Department of Energy has now chosen a second site in New Mexico for this purpose.
Let's now go to NTD's Sean Marshall for the story.
The U.S. Department of Energy publicly announced that Carlebad, New Mexico will be the second site
at which an old nuclear power plant will be turned into a solar power plant.
It's part of the government's Clean Up to Clean Energy initiative.
It selected NextEra Energy Resources Development, LLC, to enter negotiations
for a carbon pollution-free electricity generation project.
The project is to produce a minimum of 150 megawatts of solar energy along with a 100
megawatt storage system.
It's kind of a natural fit anyways to put wind and solar because that's what you need is you
need a lot of land and you need transmission infrastructure.
Those are the two choke points for them.
The site to be used is the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.
It's the nation's only repository for the disposal of the nuclear waste
generated by atomic energy defense activities.
Bennett mentions how the country is essentially stuck in a repurposing position.
The only thing that we can build nowadays because of the federal subsidies is wind and solar
and nuclear has been regulated almost out of existence.
So here we are with this dichotomy of me replacing a 24-7 power source with an
intermittent power source on the same site.
The first planned plant restructuring started with Hakate Energy.
They're working on a one-gigawatt solar facility at Hanford,
a former U.S. nuclear weapons manufacturing site in Washington state.
It makes sense as well because often that land around nuclear power plants are not utilized
for other things.
They aren't farmed.
So they're a good place to put solar versus cutting down forests
or putting them on prime agricultural land.
The future solar Hanford site was a top secret location for the Manhattan Project during World
War II where nuclear reactors produced plutonium for the world's first atomic bombs.
Sean Marshall, NTD News.
