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A data center is being proposed at the site of the former uranium enrichment plant near Piketon
By: David Forster
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ATHENS, Ohio (WOUB) — A data center is proposed at a site near Piketon that for decades produced enriched uranium for nuclear weapons and power plants.
Nondisclosure agreements are not uncommon when it comes to data centers or other business proposals still in the development stage.
The company behind the proposal is New Day Data Centers, which was registered with the state of Ohio in August. New Day has no online presence and is likely a subsidiary of another company created for this purpose.
The data center would be located at the site of the old Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant. The site is undergoing an extensive cleanup after decades of radioactive and chemical contamination.
The plant was by far the biggest employer in the region, and as portions of the site are cleaned, the goal is to put them back into productive use.
The site is owned by the U.S. Department of Energy and may be attractive for a data center for several reasons.
First, data center operators are typically looking for large tracts of flat land, which the old plant site has in abundance.
Second, data centers require significant amounts of electricity to operate. So did the old uranium enrichment plant, and that energy infrastructure may still be in place.
Third, data centers also need significant amounts of water to cool the interior as the racks of servers and other equipment continuously generate heat. The plant site is close to the Scioto River, although it’s not clear at this point where the water to operate a data center would be drawn from.
Finally, businesses that lease property from the federal government may not have to pay state and local taxes.
The Trump administration is encouraging the development of large-scale data centers on land owned by the Department of Energy to support domestic development of artificial intelligence. The sites of two other former gaseous diffusion enrichment plants, one in Tennessee and the other in Kentucky, have already been identified for this purpose. It’s not clear if the data center proposed for Piketon is part of this initiative.
WOUB reached out to the Energy Department for more information, including whether a lease has been signed yet, terms of the lease and when construction would begin, but did not receive a reply. Local government officials in the Piketon area also did not respond to WOUB’s requests for more details.
WOUB also reached out to the Southern Ohio Diversification Initiative, which was formed in part to promote redevelopment of the old uranium enrichment plant. Kevin Shoemaker, the organization’s general counsel, is bound by the nondisclosure agreement but has told WOUB he hopes to be able to share more information about the proposed data center in the coming weeks.
Plans for data centers are often announced with great fanfare, although some operators take a quieter approach. The companies behind them often tout the economic benefits, including the jobs created to build and operate them.
In some communities, however, plans for data centers have run into opposition over concerns about energy and water consumption in particular and whether local residents will end up paying to expand and upgrade these services to meet the demand.