Sep 17, 2024 - Energy & Climate

DOE taps NextEra for solar over nuclear waste site

Chuck McCutcheon

The Energy Department's Waste Isolation Pilot Plant — Section of DOE's Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. Image: Courtesy of DOE

The Energy Department wants to see solar panels built above the only place in the nation where nuclear waste is buried deep underground.

Why it matters: The Biden administration is trying to demonstrate the potential for new energy sources at sites across the DOE's nuclear weapons complex.

Driving the news: The department announced Tuesday that it chose NextEra Energy Resources Development to negotiate a deal to deploy at least 150 megawatts of electricity to the grid with a 100-megawatt storage system.

The project would be located on up to 1,800 acres at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), a repository in southeast New Mexico where tools and other discarded items from nuclear bomb factories are buried in salt caverns 2,150 feet below ground.
WIPP was the last DOE site to get a developer contract in the agency's year-old "Cleanup to Clean Energy" initiative.
The others are South Carolina's Savannah River Site; Washington state's Hanford Site; Nevada National Security Site and Idaho National Laboratory.

The intrigue: Economic development-minded officials in Carlsbad, N.M., one of the cities closest to WIPP, have been eager to lure other types of energy-related development to the area, including a potential small modular reactor or interim storage site for commercial nuclear waste.

But environmentalists and many of the state's Democratic leaders contend that New Mexico is already doing its part by hosting WIPP.

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DOE taps NextEra for solar over nuclear waste site

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