The Solar Project Is Called ‘Atomic.’ Area 25 Was Actually Atomic.

The Nevada National Security Site is getting a 200-megawatt solar project with 800 megawatt-hours of battery storage. Its name is Atomic.

The name is almost too perfect. This is a photovoltaic project on the federal reservation once known as the Nevada Test Site, a place inseparable from the history of American nuclear science. Its rollout even included an information day at Las Vegas’s Atomic Museum. DOE/NNSA describes the project here, and developer Estuary Power lists Atomic in its current project portfolio.

But Atomic is not being built where the site’s reactor history actually unfolded. It is planned for Area 22, near Mercury and U.S. 95—not Area 25.

Several miles northwest, Area 25 at Jackass Flats was built around experimental reactors and nuclear rocket engines. It is also where DOE has previously considered large-scale solar development. That combination raises a question worth answering before more of the area is committed to a single use:

Should Area 25 be evaluated for advanced nuclear energy before it is covered with utility-scale solar?

Atomic is in Area 22, not Area 25

That distinction is essential.

DOE’s 2024 Cleanup to Clean Energy material places the Atomic parcel in Area 22. Estuary later signed an easement covering an initial 2,400 acres for the 200-MW solar and 800-MWh battery project. The proposal is documented in DOE’s project material and Estuary’s project listing.

Area 25 is a separate case. The NNSS Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement designated a large renewable-energy zone there and evaluated substantial solar development. A January 2024 supplemental analysis noted that the earlier Area 25 solar proposal had not been implemented and was not included in the accelerated plan then under review. The 2024 supplemental analysis is available here.

No one is clearing Area 25 for the Atomic project. The point is more forward-looking: before DOE approves large-scale solar in Area 25, it should publish a serious comparison of the site’s possible uses—including advanced nuclear.

A landscape built around reactor experiments

Jackass Flats was home to the Nuclear Rocket Development Station, jointly administered by the Atomic Energy Commission and NASA for Project Rover and NERVA.

This was not a token research outpost. The complex included Test Cells A and C, Engine Test Stand 1, control facilities, radioactive-material infrastructure, and buildings used to assemble, maintain, and disassemble reactors and engines. The Jackass & Western Railroad moved reactor hardware between facilities.

Kiwi, Phoebus, Peewee, Nuclear Furnace, and NERVA hardware were tested there. NNSS’s anniversary publications collect that history, and the agency’s 2018 environmental site description explains why Jackass Flats was chosen for nuclear thermal propulsion research.

Much of the old complex is now being dismantled. DOE’s Environmental Management program has demolished or remediated legacy facilities, including work at Test Cell C and the E-MAD complex. The Nevada Site Specific Advisory Board’s October 2025 report documents that cleanup.

None of this means a 1960s test complex can be restarted as a modern power plant. Its engineering, materials, safety systems, regulatory basis, and mission belong to another era. The history establishes a narrower but important point: Area 25 was deliberately selected, engineered, and operated for reactor experiments. That should be enough to justify a modern siting study rather than an assumption that solar is the land’s obvious next use.

Desert solar is not footprint-free

From a highway, Jackass Flats can look empty. DOE’s own environmental analysis describes something more complicated.

For the previously considered Area 25 solar development, DOE evaluated thousands of acres of potential disturbance. The 2024 supplemental analysis notes that much of Area 25 outside the old industrial areas contains soils that have not previously been disturbed. Utility-scale construction could affect topsoil, vegetation, drainage, and erosion. See the Area 25 discussion in the supplemental analysis.

That is the tradeoff hidden by the phrase “empty desert.” Sunlight is diffuse, so collecting it at utility scale requires a wide horizontal footprint. NREL’s national analysis found that photovoltaic plants commonly occupy several acres per megawatt, depending on their technology and layout. NREL’s land-use report is available here.

Nevada should continue building solar where it fits: rooftops, parking structures, industrial property, brownfields, mine lands, and carefully selected utility sites. But federal ownership does not make undisturbed desert ecologically disposable. Nor should a historic nuclear research reservation default to one of the most land-intensive forms of electricity generation without comparing alternatives.

What an operating reactor could contribute

Nuclear energy presents a different land-use proposition: firm power from a comparatively compact industrial site. At NNSS, however, the value of an advanced reactor would not be limited to electricity.

NNSS already supports nuclear-security experiments, national laboratories, nonproliferation work, emergency response, high-hazard operations, and research involving nuclear materials. NNSS describes its current missions here. A modern demonstration reactor could complement those missions while producing useful power and years of operational evidence.

That evidence could include:

• fuel and materials performance;
• maintenance, component aging, reliability, and availability;
• dry or hybrid cooling under desert conditions;
• advanced instrumentation and control systems;
• cybersecurity, physical security, safeguards, and radiation detection;
• emergency-response exercises and remote-operation practices;
• load following, storage integration, and grid behavior.

A power reactor would not replace specialized research reactors or zero-power critical assemblies; they answer different questions. Its value would be the sustained operating data that short demonstrations and critical experiments cannot provide.

DOE is already pursuing related models elsewhere. At Idaho National Laboratory, the former Experimental Breeder Reactor-II containment structure has become DOME, a test bed for privately developed microreactors. DOE describes DOME here. DOE’s Reactor Pilot Program is also creating pathways for private advanced-reactor demonstrations, including projects outside national laboratories. The program is described here.

The federal government is already combining private developers, federal nuclear sites, test infrastructure, and research goals. Area 25 deserves a place in that conversation.

Remoteness is an engineering question

Area 25 is remote, but it is not beyond the reach of Nevada’s electrical system.

The One Nevada Transmission Line is a 235-mile, 500-kV corridor connecting the Ely region with greater Las Vegas. DOE describes it as a major north-south backbone with roughly 600 MW of transfer capability. DOE’s project page is here.

NV Energy is also building Greenlink, a high-voltage network intended to strengthen connections among Las Vegas, western Nevada, and the Ely area. NV Energy’s Greenlink overview is here. Within Area 25, the Jackass Flats complex historically had its own high-voltage electrical infrastructure, described in DOE’s earlier Nevada Test Site environmental documentation. The 1996 EIS appendix is available here.

That does not mean a reactor could connect tomorrow. Any proposal would require interconnection and load-flow studies, transformers, switchgear, protection systems, and probably substantial transmission upgrades. But those are engineering and cost questions, not evidence that the site is electrically unreachable. Large solar development at Area 25 would face transmission requirements as well.

The case for a study—not a foregone conclusion

Area 25 has unusual advantages, but history alone does not make it a suitable modern reactor site. A credible feasibility study would need to examine:

1. seismic and fault hazards;
2. foundation and geotechnical conditions;
3. groundwater limits and dry or hybrid cooling;
4. contamination and land-use restrictions left by Project Rover;
5. conflicts with ongoing NNSA national-security missions;
6. physical security and emergency planning;
7. transmission capacity and interconnection costs;
8. the appropriate DOE or NRC regulatory pathway;
9. spent-fuel and waste management;
10. lifecycle cost compared with other sources of firm power.

Any one of those issues could prove decisive. That is a reason to perform the study, not to dismiss the site without one.

The same standard should apply to claims of political misconduct. Because Atomic involves federal land and a private developer, its award and procurement history deserve scrutiny. But the public records reviewed for this article do not establish an improper political connection.

DOE says it used a competitive process for Cleanup to Clean Energy, although it had authority to lease some land noncompetitively. NNSA’s FY2024 acquisition report identifies the federal personnel involved in the solicitation and proposal review. DOE’s Cleanup to Clean Energy material and the FY2024 acquisition report provide the available public record.

The stronger criticism is about policy, not conspiracy: has DOE compared the highest-value uses of this unusual federal land before committing more of it to one generation model?

Area 25 should lose on the evidence—not by default

The name Atomic makes the missed comparison hard to ignore. The new project will collect sunlight in Area 22 while, several miles away, the remains of a complex built for some of America’s most ambitious reactor experiments disappear into cleanup.

That irony does not make solar a bad technology. It does make Area 25’s future worth examining carefully.

The United States is again trying to commercialize advanced reactors. DOE is opening federal sites to private developers, creating reactor test programs, and repurposing historic nuclear infrastructure. Nevada is expanding its transmission system and needs dependable electricity. Area 25 is remote, federally controlled, historically nuclear, and already considered for major energy development.

Before the Area 25 renewable-energy zone is committed to large-scale solar, DOE should conduct and publish a direct comparison with advanced nuclear energy.

The study may find a geological, operational, regulatory, water, or economic problem that rules Area 25 out. Another Nevada site may prove better. But Area 25 should lose that comparison on the evidence—not because policymakers assumed that desert land is most valuable when covered with solar panels.

The solar project may be called Atomic.

Area 25 already earned the name.