The US Department of Energy (DOE) recently announced plans to convert land that once housed parts of the Manhattan Project into a 1 GW solar farm. This project is taking place at the former Hanford nuclear testing facility in Washington state, known as Site W, which was home to the world’s first plutonium production reactor and contributed to the creation of the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki. The 580-square mile desert location could potentially house the largest solar project in the country if built to its full capacity. The DOE has partnered with Hecate Energy as part of the Biden-Harris administration’s Cleanup to Clean Energy initiative, which aims to repurpose DOE-owned land for clean energy generation. Although negotiations are still ongoing, this project has the potential to significantly increase solar energy capacity in the US. Despite this progress, the US still has some catching up to do compared to Europe, where the share of solar energy in the electricity mix has recently surpassed that of the US.
