DOE plans AI data centers at former uranium sites in Kentucky and Ohio

In short: The US Department of Energy is working with private companies to turn two former uranium enrichment sites into very large AI data center campuses, powered mostly by new natural gas plants.

What happened

The Department of Energy, or DOE, says it will reuse federal land at the Paducah Site in western Kentucky and the Portsmouth site near Piketon, Ohio. Both locations were built in the 1950s to enrich uranium during the Cold War and are now being cleaned up and closed down.

In Kentucky, NextEra Energy and Brookfield Asset Management plan a privately funded project they value at about $100 billion. The plan includes a data center campus that Brookfield would own and run, plus new power facilities that NextEra would build. A data center is a warehouse full of computers (think of it like a factory, but the product is computing work), and the site is expected to start operating in 2028.

In Ohio, DOE has also announced the PORTS Technology Campus at the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant. DOE says plans include up to 10 gigawatts of data centers and about 10 gigawatts of new power generation, most of it from natural gas. Construction is expected to start this year, and DOE says the project could also support research work in areas like quantum computing (a different kind of computing that uses physics to solve some problems faster).

Why it matters

AI systems need a lot of electricity all day and all night. DOE is betting that these old industrial sites are a faster place to build because they already have major power lines, water systems, and fiber internet connections. The choice to rely heavily on natural gas, plus large batteries, could also raise local debates about pollution and long term energy plans.

Source: NYTimes