Via energy.gov
The DOE is turning a Cold War-era uranium enrichment facility into a hub for artificial intelligence, and the energy implications stretch well beyond Kentucky
A facility that spent six decades enriching uranium for the US government is getting a second act. The Department of Energy has issued a Request for Offer to private-sector developers, inviting proposals to build AI data centers and energy infrastructure at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in western Kentucky.
The Paducah plant operated from 1952 until 2013, making it the last government-owned uranium enrichment facility in the country. Now, instead of processing nuclear fuel, the site could be humming with GPU clusters by the end of 2027.
From uranium to algorithms #
The DOE’s Office of Environmental Management issued the RFO in November 2025, targeting developers willing to fund long-term leasing arrangements entirely on their own dime. The government brings the land and existing utilities. The private sector brings the capital and the compute.
The Paducah site includes a 30-million-gallon-per-day water pump, infrastructure originally designed for industrial-scale cooling.
Paducah is one of four federal locations selected for AI infrastructure projects. Idaho National Laboratory and the Oak Ridge site in Tennessee are also on the list.
Groundbreaking for at least one data center project at Paducah is slated for June 2026, with full operations anticipated by the end of 2027. The local Citizens Advisory Board endorsed the AI data center concept back in May 2025, aligning with federal AI executive orders that have been pushing agencies to think more strategically about compute infrastructure.
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