DOE to Convert Kentucky Uranium Plant Into $100 Billion AI Power Complex
The former Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant will be repurposed into a massive data center campus to secure U.S. AI superiority.
The U.S. Department of Energy is transforming the former Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Kentucky into a $100 billion AI data center and energy complex. The project marks a pivot in federal land use, repurposing a Cold War-era nuclear site to accelerate domestic computing power.
Under a partnership with Brookfield Asset Management for development and NextEra Energy for power generation, the initiative will establish a 1.8 gigawatt (GW) AI data center campus. To sustain this massive electrical load, NextEra Energy will deploy 2 GW of natural gas-fired generation alongside 2.6 GW of battery energy storage. Energy Secretary Chris Wright stated the project will bring "thousands of jobs and tens of billions of dollars of investment in rural western Kentucky."
A Legacy of Nuclear Production
The Paducah site served as a uranium enrichment plant for decades before shutting down in 2013. Like several other Department of Energy sites across the country, the facility has spent years undergoing decontamination and decommissioning after producing nuclear materials for power plants and weapons. This conversion is part of a broader pattern of repurposing federal assets, with similar initiatives announced for the Savannah River Site in South Carolina and the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Ohio.
National Security and Energy Demands
This project is a cornerstone of a Trump administration strategy to ensure U.S. AI superiority over China by leveraging federal land for critical infrastructure. By integrating power generation directly with data processing, the government aims to bypass the grid constraints that currently slow the deployment of large-scale AI models. However, the reliance on natural gas to meet these immense energy needs highlights a tension between the urgent drive for computing dominance and broader environmental goals regarding greenhouse gas emissions.
The Path Forward
As the project moves toward development, the focus shifts to the logistical challenge of building a high-tech campus on a site with a complex industrial and radioactive history. While the partnership with Brookfield and NextEra provides the necessary capital and technical expertise, the scale of the 1.8 GW campus will make it one of the most energy-intensive sites in the region. Observers will be watching how the DOE manages the transition from a decommissioning project to an active industrial hub.