What sustainable tech will be taking over a Manhattan Project site?

The Manhattan Project was a top-secret U.S. initiative to develop nuclear weapons in the 1940s. One major aspect of this project was the Hanford nuclear testing facility, a.k.a. Site W, in the state of Washington. The world’s first full-scale plutonium reactor was there, and the plutonium that came from it was used in the very first atomic bomb.

While the Manhattan Project ended more than 75 years ago, Site W is about to get some new life. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced this week that it intends to turn the site into a 1GW solar farm. DOE is partnering with Hecate Energy to convert the 8,000-acre site. When completed, it would be the largest solar farm in the country — a record currently held by the Edwards Sanborn Solar and Energy Storage project in California that generates 875 megawatts.

Hecate and DOE are still in negotiations for a realty agreement before the deal is sealed. The initiative is part of the Cleanup to Clean Energy initiative, launched last year, which aims to repurpose DOE land for clean energy initiatives. So far it has added 90 GW of solar capacity to the U.S. power grid, enough to power 13 million homes.