Overview
- DOE, Brookfield, NextEra and regional utilities announced Wednesday that they will convert the federal Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant into a privately funded, roughly $100 billion AI data‑center campus.
- The plan calls for the campus to support about 1.8 gigawatts of utility capacity and more than 1.2 gigawatts of computing capacity, with NextEra proposing 2 GW of natural‑gas generation, 2.6 GW of battery storage and transmission upgrades.
- Project partners say the buildout will be staged through about 2031–2032 and will be privately financed while producing an estimated 8,000 construction jobs and about 600 permanent jobs.
- Key project elements, including the power‑service agreement, must be approved by the Kentucky Public Service Commission and have drawn questions from state officials and local communities over rates, emissions and water use.
- The development will proceed on DOE land while long‑term remediation of the 3,550‑acre Paducah site continues with a department estimate of completion around 2065 at roughly $17 billion and as part of a broader DOE effort at other Cold War sites.