The Energy Department is opening land at Hanford, where America once made plutonium

Ground beside the Columbia River that made plutonium for nuclear weapons from 1943 to 1989 is now being offered to companies that want to build power plants, factories or computing centers on it. The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management put out a request for offers on Nov. 6 for industrial development at the Hanford Site near Richland, Washington. Responses are due Jan. 29, 2027.

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It is a lease offer, not a sale, and the applicants carry the bill.

Two tracts beside a planned reactor campus

The American Nuclear Society’s Nuclear Newswire reported that up to more than 3,000 acres may be made available. Tract 1 covers 1,876 acres and is available at the start, while Tract 2, 1,249 acres on an adjoining plot, may be opened later. Together those two figures come to 3,125 acres. DOE’s own release uses a larger ceiling, up to 3,700 acres identified for industrial use under the site’s Comprehensive Land Use Plan, and gives no split between the tracts.

Both tracts lie just south of the area where Amazon, X-energy and Energy Northwest plan the Cascade Advanced Energy Facility, which would hold up to 12 Xe-100 high-temperature, gas-cooled reactors. A 2025 update from the same publication described Amazon’s backing of an initial four-unit, 320-megawatt project with Energy Northwest, so the new land would sit beside a nuclear build already in motion.

Build, bring or buy: what an applicant must supply

DOE’s announcement says the department wants one or more long-term realty agreements, fully funded by the applicants. Developers must build, operate and decommission their projects, secure their own utility interconnection agreements, and follow a Ratepayer Protection Pledge that, in the release’s description, makes large technology companies pay for grid upgrades. Power can be built, brought or bought, and the generating plant does not have to sit on the leased land.

Proposals will be judged on technological readiness, financial viability and plans for regulatory and permitting requirements. DOE also says it will weigh fit with local redevelopment plans and partnerships with tribal and local businesses. The release gives no lease length, rent or other financial terms.

A virtual industry day is set for Dec. 9, 2026, and prospective bidders register by email to DOE’s redevelopment mailbox. Nuclear Newswire adds that developers of energy generation or storage projects must arrange their own connections with electric utilities, and that the land falls in the industrial category of Hanford’s land-use plan. DOE’s media contact on the release is Cerise Peck of the Hanford Field Office.

From wartime plutonium to American Energy Hubs

Cleanup of Hanford began in 1989 under an agreement among DOE, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Washington State Department of Ecology, and DOE adopted its Comprehensive Land Use Plan in 1999, listing industrial, agricultural and low-activity recreational uses. In 2023 the site was one of five chosen for the Cleanup to Clean Energy initiative. The Hanford site’s own page still leads with cleanup news, including a finished landfill expansion excavation.

The framing has shifted since 2023. The earlier Cleanup to Clean Energy initiative aimed to host projects producing carbon pollution-free electricity, including nuclear, while the 2026 offer lists affordable energy generation, advanced manufacturing, critical materials development and computing without that qualifier. Nuclear Newswire also reads the leasing language as leaving the land in federal ownership, though it says the terms are not spelled out.

The offer falls under the American Energy Hubs initiative, which Assistant Secretary Tim Walsh announced on June 30, 2026, to convert former Manhattan Project and Cold War sites into hubs for energy, innovation and advanced manufacturing. In the release, Walsh said now is the time to invest in a community that has shouldered the burden of the past for far too long. Hanford Site Manager Ray Geimer said the site looks forward to working collaboratively with the Tri-Cities community and private industry.

Hanford is not the only site in the program. The DOE page on the initiative says Natural Resource Damage Assessment updates were presented at the same June meeting for Oak Ridge, Hanford and Fernald, and that Marla Morales, acting deputy secretary for nuclear energy, said DOE had received 28 proposals from states and communities for its separate Energy Innovation Campus effort and was in discussions with nine finalists. Joceline Nahigian, director of the environmental management office’s intergovernmental programs, called the relationships built through the working group critical to the mission. According to Nuclear Newswire, Walsh described the cleanup-site reuse approach in a March 2026 speech and held an Oct. 27 press event at East Tennessee Technology Park in Oak Ridge.

What is still unknown is who will answer. DOE has not set lease terms in public, Tract 2 may or may not open, and the Jan. 29, 2027 deadline will be the first test of whether power developers and technology companies want land next to a cleanup site. DOE has said it will consider partnerships with tribal and local businesses, so the Tri-Cities and tribal responses to the offers may matter as much as the size of the bids.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.