Photo: JSquish / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) The Paducah site redevelopment signals Washington's growing appetite for energy-intensive compute infrastructure, with implications for crypto miners watching the same power grids.
The US Department of Energy has selected the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Western Kentucky as one of four federal sites slated for AI data center development, paired with new natural gas power generation. Energy Secretary Chris Wright framed the project as a jobs engine and grid reliability play, promising billions in private investment and thousands of new positions in a region that could use both.
The Paducah plant operated as a uranium enrichment facility from 1952 to 2013, making it one of the longest-running nuclear processing sites in American history. Since shutting down, the site has been undergoing environmental remediation. Now the DOE wants to give it a second act.
On July 24, 2025, the DOE announced Paducah as one of four federal locations chosen for AI data center development. The other three sites are in Idaho, Tennessee, and South Carolina. Each was selected for a simple reason: they already have the bones of serious energy infrastructure.
Paducah’s selling points include existing electrical grid connections, access to natural gas pipelines, and established fiber optic networks. Building from scratch would cost significantly more and take years longer.
The DOE followed up in November 2025 by issuing a Request for Offer, soliciting proposals from private companies willing to sign long-term leases to build and operate AI data centers at the site. The key detail: private funding, not taxpayer dollars, would finance the construction. The government provides the land and infrastructure access. The private sector brings the capital and the compute.
The Trump administration has been explicit about wanting to accelerate AI infrastructure on federal lands, treating compute capacity as a matter of national security rather than just a commercial opportunity.
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