Paducah AI Data Center Campus

The federal government is handing one of the Cold War’s most contaminated industrial sites a second life as an AI factory. The Department of Energy announced plans on July 29 for a more than $100 billion privately funded data center campus on part of its former Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in western Kentucky, one of the largest such projects ever proposed in the United States.

Project Scope

Brookfield will develop and operate the campus. NextEra Energy will build and own the dedicated power infrastructure, roughly 4.6 gigawatts of new generation to feed it. When fully built out around 2032, the site is expected to support up to 1.8 GW of utility capacity and more than 1.2 GW of compute load across a 3,556-acre footprint. Local partners include Big Rivers Electric, Jackson Purchase Energy Cooperative, and Paducah Power System. DOE estimates about 8,000 construction jobs and 600 permanent positions.

Why It Matters

The Paducah plant enriched uranium for weapons and later for reactor fuel starting in 1952, and it has sat as a cleanup liability for decades. Turning it into digital infrastructure solves two problems at once: it puts a heavily industrial, grid-connected brownfield back to work, and it sidesteps the community fights greenfield data centers keep losing. Power is the real story. Pairing 4.6 GW of purpose-built generation with the campus is an admission the grid can’t absorb loads this size on its own anymore. Expect more of these federal-site conversions as developers hunt for land that already has transmission, water, and a workforce nearby.

Project Team & Details