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Federal, state, local and international officials break ground for what could be the nation’s largest data center in Pike County
By: Amanda Pirani | David Forster | WOUB
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PIKETON, Ohio (WOUB) — Pike County could become home to one of the largest data center campuses in the nation as part of a trade deal made with Japan last year.
The development broke ground Friday on the site of the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant near Piketon, where uranium was enriched for decades for nuclear weapons and power plants.
The announcement marks a major next step in the federal government’s Genesis mission to develop national artificial intelligence infrastructure fueling scientific research and energy innovation.
Tim Walsh, assistant secretary for the Office of Environmental Management at the U.S. Department of Energy, said the plant, known locally as the A-plant, is “soon to become the AI plant.”
“AI data centers are the factories of the modern digital age,” he said. “I see a very bright future here in southern Ohio.”
SB Energy, a subsidiary of Japanese tech investment company SoftBank, will build the data center.
The Trump administration announced in February that SB Energy also plans to build a $33 billion natural gas plant in the area. That plant, billed as the largest in the world, will power the data center campus.
Both developments are part of a $550 billion investment commitment made by Japan in exchange for lowering tariffs on the country imposed by the Trump administration.
The data center campus’ capacity at full buildout will be 10 gigawatts. That’s more than half of the total operating capacity of all online data centers in the nation.
The data center campus will be built in phases and is expected to employ 35,000 construction workers at its peak. Once complete, it will require about 2,500 people to operate.
“The largest bet on a construction facility ever made in history is right here,” U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said during the groundbreaking ceremony. “And you should be incredibly proud of that.”
The developments will require an expedited demolition and clean up process on the A-plant site, which began environmental remediation over a decade ago.
The first phase of construction will include an 800 megawatt data center. Walsh estimated it will come online in two years.
Ohio is a national leader for data center developments, prompting some concerns about grid capacity and an increased burden on ratepayers.
SoftBank Chairman and CEO Masayoshi Son assured the community they will not see any bill increases as a result of the data center because of its accompanying gas plant.
“I will commit right here, right now, that we will protect the electricity bill,” he said. “We will not take electricity away from the grid. We will generate the entire electricity use by ourselves.”
Son said his company will also donate $40 million to the local community to support local resources, such as schools and medical infrastructure.
The Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion plant began enriching uranium in the early 1950s at the onset of the Cold War.
That enrichment process ended in 2001 and 10 years later a massive, multibillion dollar operation began, and continues to this day, to clean up the site, which was contaminated with radioactive and other toxic materials.
The plan was that as portions of the A-plant site were cleaned they would be turned over to the community for development. A few hundred acres of the more than 3,700-acre site have been turned over so far.
The federal government still owns the rest. One concern local government officials have expressed is that if the federal government keeps the remaining property and instead leases it out for data center development, the county would not collect any property tax revenue.
Pike County Commissioner Tony Montgomery said county officials have begun discussing a payment in lieu of taxes agreement with SB Energy.
“What we’re asking is … let’s negotiate like it’s private property,” he said. “And they were very open to that.”
Herman Potter, Southern Ohio Diversification Initiative board chair, said he expects that regardless of such an agreement, the county’s tax base should grow significantly as a result of the SB Energy projects.
“They’re going to be bringing in probably tens of thousands of people working in this area,” he said. “And they’re going to need places to stay and places to live.”