The U.S. Department of Energy announced yesterday a plan to use land at the site of the nation’s only underground repository for nuclear waste to construct green energy systems.
The project at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (the so-called WIPP), located near Carslbad, New Mexico, is part of an ongoing federal mission.
The aim is to transform portions of government-owned property once used for the nation's nuclear weapons program into prime real estate for renewable energy endeavors.
The WIPP project is part of more than 50 square miles of government land that can be used for constructing solar arrays and battery storage systems that can supply utilities with emissions-free electricity.
At the nuclear repository in New Mexico, federal officials say there is potential to install at least 150 megawatts of solar and another 100 megawatts of storage.
The amount of green energy generated at the WIPP site would be more than enough to meet the needs of the repository, but none of it would feed directly into government operations there.
Officials said the energy from the solar array would be sold to Xcel Energy and put into the utility's distribution system. Xcel serves customers in parts of New Mexico and Texas, as well as other states.
Officials said there is no estimate of when ground could be broken, saying engineering and planning work would be needed once a lease is signed and regulatory approvals would be required.
The fed is negotiating some similar cleanup-to-clean-energy projects, including a plutonium-producing site in Washington state, and national labs and other sites in Idaho, Nevada, and South Caroline.
Andrew Mayock with the White House Council on Environmental Quality said Tuesday that the new projects are all about federal agencies using their scale and purchasing power to support the growth of the clean energy industry.
Adapted from an Associated Press story written by Susan Montoya Bryan.
