US Energy Department converts Kentucky uranium enrichment plant into AI data center and gas complex.

The U.S. Department of Energy, capitalizing on the artificial intelligence boom, is converting another Cold War-era uranium enrichment site into a $100 billion data center complex with dedicated natural gas and battery storage power generation in Kentucky, funded through private equity.

The department selected investment firm Brookfield Asset Management to develop and operate the data center at the government-owned Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant. In March, it announced a similar project at its Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Ohio.

Both sites are undergoing extensive cleanup, decontamination and decommissioning after decades of fueling the nation's nuclear weapons and power plants. The project aligns with the Trump administration's efforts to make artificial intelligence superiority over China a top national security and economic priority.

The federal government is transforming former DOE sites into "engines of innovation and economic growth" to "ensure the United States wins the A.I. race," Energy Secretary Chris Wright said in a statement Wednesday.

"There will be a lot of new natural gas power plants, a large data center, thousands of jobs and tens of billions of dollars of investment in rural western Kentucky," Wright said on Fox & Friends.

In July, the Department of Energy selected engineering contractor Amentum to negotiate a lease for an AI data center and on-site power plant at South Carolina's Savannah River Site, a massive complex where the federal government once produced materials for nuclear weapons, primarily tritium and plutonium-239.

Real estate, energy and data center services anchor New York-headquartered Brookfield's investment portfolio, which manages more than $1 trillion in assets.

A Brookfield spokesperson estimated that 30 percent of the $100 billion would fund data center and power construction, with the remainder spent on equipment including servers, routers and semiconductor chips. Discussions with commercial partners to lease data center space are ongoing, according to Brookfield spokesperson Simon Maine.

Other Paducah project partners include power giant NextEra Energy and local utilities. NextEra will build and own the power generation components: 2 gigawatts of natural gas-fired generation, transmission upgrades and 2.6 gigawatts of battery energy storage to support a new 1.8 gigawatt AI data center campus. The plant would be Kentucky's largest gas-fired facility. A single gigawatt can power approximately 750,000 homes.

State utility regulators must approve the power service agreement, and excess electricity will feed the regional grid. Construction is expected to complete by 2031.

Cleanup continues at the roughly 3,550-acre site, which was identified last year as one of 16 federal locations available for technology companies developing data management and storage capacity. The facility shut down in 2013; the gaseous diffusion uranium enrichment process is now considered obsolete.

The department projects cleanup completion in 2065 at approximately $17 billion, encompassing building demolition, uranium converter disassembly, refrigerant removal and treatment of extensive groundwater contamination.

Meanwhile, the department is planning to provide decades of stored uranium waste from Paducah to companies using newer technologies to re-enrich it for power plant use.

Community group Protect McCracken County has raised concerns about the uranium enrichment and data center projects, noting the work occurs beside a river from which 5 million people downstream drink water, without an independent impact study.

Byron Gary, senior attorney with the environmental advocacy group Kentucky Resources Council, said the contaminated site's development and any groundwater extraction must be executed carefully. He cautioned that a gas-fired power plant of this scale—which emits greenhouse gases—carries climate change implications and that ratepayers must not subsidize the plants and transmission upgrades.

Gary added his organization will ensure the Department of Energy does not circumvent permitting processes to avoid environmental protections. "There shouldn't be a justification to get around that and end up potentially dumping a lot more burden on a rural community that can't afford it," he said.