Energy Department plans data center campus at shuttered uranium site

The Energy Department moved to convert the shuttered Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon, Ohio, into a data center campus with its own power supply, recasting a 3,700-acre Cold War uranium site as infrastructure for artificial intelligence. The former enrichment plant, now branded the PORTS Technology Campus, is pitched as a 10-gigawatt buildout tied to gas-fired generation.

The department announced the public-private partnership on March 20, 2026, on the decommissioned uranium site in southern Ohio. DOE's land-transfer authority gives it the power to dispose of, sell or lease certain lands and facilities, a mechanism now being used to clear the way for the project and similar federal-site plans.

The Ohio move did not stand alone. In April 2025, DOE issued a request for information on AI infrastructure on DOE lands. The request called data centers a critical component of the modern economy and a national and economic security priority. Two months later, the White House issued an executive action titled “Accelerating Federal Permitting of Data Center Infrastructure,” and its July 2025 AI Action Plan said the United States must maintain “unquestioned and unchallenged global technological leadership.”

By September 2025, DOE was already soliciting proposals for AI data centers and energy projects at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. DOE later posted similar solicitations for Idaho National Laboratory and the Savannah River Site. Those locations, like Portsmouth, bring existing federal ownership, old industrial footprints and access to transmission into the same deal structure.

The administration has also tied the AI push to a wider nuclear and energy policy agenda. DOE's AI strategy connects data center expansion with accelerated reactor testing and advanced reactor deployment. At the same time, CSIS’s Nuclear Network warned in October 2025 and again on March 13, 2026, that Trump officials were weighing plans to redirect Cold War-era plutonium from the national stockpile to civilian nuclear projects, including power for AI data centers. On May 26, 2026, nonproliferation experts criticized the idea of giving weapons-grade plutonium to start-ups, saying it could complicate nuclear fuel policy and weapons stewardship.