DOE-EM seeks proposals for Hanford site development projects

The Department of Energy's Office of Environmental Management has announced that it is accepting proposals for industrial development of portions of the Hanford Reservation near Richland, Wash.

According to a November 6 press release, as part of its American Energy Hubs initiative, DOE-EM seeks to lease plots of land to companies pursuing projects in "affordable energy generation, advanced manufacturing, critical materials development, and computing capabilities." The request for offer requires project developers to "build, bring, or buy" the energy required for the project's operations, though the power generation facility does not need to be co-located on site. Developers working on energy generation or storage initiatives will be responsible for establishing connections with electric utilities.

DOE-EM plans to make potentially more than 3,000 acres of land available for development under this RFO. A total of 1,876 acres, called Tract 1, will be available to start; the agency also has identified 1,249 acres of land on an adjoining plot, called Tract 2, that it possibly can open up to development.

Both tracts are located near the Columbia River, just south of the portion of the Hanford site where Amazon, X-energy, and Energy Northwest plan to build the Cascade Advanced Energy Facility, a power generation facility that will comprise up to 12 of X-energy's Xe-100 high-temperature, gas-cooled reactors.

DOE-EM will host a virtual "industry day" information event on December 9 for developers interested in submitting proposals for the current RFO. Potential applicants can email [email protected] to register. The agency is accepting proposals until January 29, 2027.

Revitalizing the Hanford site: From 1943 to 1989, plutonium was produced at the Hanford Reservation for use in nuclear weapons. Cleanup of the site began in 1989 with an agreement signed by the DOE, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Washington State Department of Ecology.

In 1999, the DOE adopted the Comprehensive Land Use Plan for Hanford. Among its provisions, the plan listed several categories of possible future uses of the land and a land-use map to determine cleanup standards for different areas of the site. The categories included industrial, agricultural, and low-activity recreational use, among others. The land DOE-EM proposes to lease through its current RFO falls into the industrial category.

Although the DOE has been planning for Hanford's redevelopment for more than three decades, the current DOE-EM RFO falls in line with the agency's recent push to reuse its nuclear cleanup sites for projects in the nuclear energy, advanced manufacturing, and advanced computing sectors, an approach that DOE-EM Assistant Secretary Tim Walsh first outlined in a March 2026 speech. More recently, on October 27, Walsh held a press event with executives from the nuclear energy sector at another DOE-EM cleanup site-East Tennessee Technology Park, part of the Oak Ridge Reservation site-to tout its development as an American Energy Hub.

However, the DOE previously has opened the Hanford site to development. Notably, in 2023, Hanford was one of five sites selected for development under the Biden administration's "Cleanup to Clean Energy" initiative, which sought to make DOE-owned former nuclear weapons sites available for projects that promoted "carbon pollution-free electricity," including nuclear energy.