NUCLEAR-RENEWABLES TIE IN | SPECIAL REPORT
Above: The Dukovany nuclear station is home to the Czech Republic’s largest solar car park roof
for the development of new clean electricity generation and storage through leases, grants, permits, or other mechanisms. The sites in question belong to the US government via the Department of Energy (DOE). Three of the DOE’s bodies, the Office of Environmental Management (OEM), Office of Nuclear Energy and National Nuclear Security Administration have joined together to identify about 35,000 acres (14,000 Ha) of land for potential development at five sites: Idaho National Laboratory (890 square miles, 2300 km2
Carolina (310 square miles, 800 km2
Security Site; and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico. This could be just the first tranche: the DOE says once
it has signed agreements on using the areas identified, a process expected to be complete this year, it will “continue to engage and partner with industry, tribal nations, communities, stakeholders, regulators and others to implement a process for further development of clean energy projects on DOE land”. Four sets of leases have already been progressed by DOE: At Idaho National Laboratory it will enter into lease
negotiations with two developers. NorthRenew Energy Partners proposes PV on 2,000 acres (800 Ha) for a 300 MW solar farm, along with battery storage. Spitfire proposes to install a 100 MW solar farm on approximately 500 acres (200 Ha), again together with battery storage. At Hanford, DOE will enter into negotiations with Hecate
Energy, for a solar project capable of delivering up 1000 MW within an 8,000-acre (3200 Ha) area of the site. At Savannah River, DOE has selected two potential
projects. Stellar Renewable Power will enter lease negotiations for a 75 MW solar farm and battery on at least 500 acres (200 Ha) and Ameresco, Inc will be in negotiations for a 75 MW solar farm and battery on a further 500 acres (200 Ha).
At the Nevada National Security Site, Estuary Power LLC and NV Energy have been selected to begin negotiations over 2,400 acres (1000 Ha) for a solar farm of at least 200 MW.
Meanwhile at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant a request for
proposals has been extended and bidders will be named later this year.
Announcing bidders for the Hanford project, US
Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm said: “With today’s announcement, DOE is transforming thousands of
acres of land at our Hanford site into a thriving centre of carbon-free solar power generation, leading by example in cleaning up our environment and delivering new economic opportunities to local communities.”
); Hanford in Washington; Savannah River in South ); Nevada’s National
Europe doubles land use Legacy US nuclear sites have many thousands of acres available for alternative uses. That’s not the case at Europe’s compact nuclear power plants, but increasingly the ‘solar everywhere’ mindset has developers asking what areas can do ‘double duty’. Rooftop PV has been increasingly commonplace over the
last decade, but the advent of electric vehicles has made it an option for the ‘solar car park’. The nuclear industry in the Czech Republic picked up
this idea at an early stage. It was back in 2021 that power engineers completed construction of the country’s largest solar car park roof, at the Dukovany nuclear station. The CEZ group, which owns the plant, created 322 new parking spots covered by 2,600 photovoltaic panels. “Photovoltaics on the site of the Dukovany power plant is a very innovative concept. We believe that there will soon be many more such examples,” Minister of Industry and Trade Karel Havlíček said when it opened. “The new rooftop power plant at the parking lot in Dukovany is also a symbol of the future of the Czech energy sector – nuclear and solar zero-emission sources will be generating electricity here side by side,” said Daniel Beneš, Chairman of the Management Board and CEO of ČEZ. The solar car park includes three new public charging stations for EVs, adding to six existing at the site, with six more planned. Dukovany’s array totals just 831 kW, but ‘solar everywhere’
assumes that large numbers of low power installations over large areas will provide bulk power (a contrast with nuclear’s small number of high-power installations, each with a small footprint). A law passed in France illustrates this: it requires any car park with 80 spaces or more to install solar PV covering at least half the site within five years from July 2023. Sites with more than 400 spaces have just three years to comply and France believes it could result in installations totalling 11 GW – significant in capacity terms, although of course it is only able to collect that much energy at peak periods on sunny days.
PV a positive for nuclear These examples of solar installations focus on electricity production and scale, using the nuclear site footprint but
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