Paducah AI Energy Data Center Campus: Brookfield NextEra Specs

Status: Announced / Site Selection & Development Planning   |   Location: U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Paducah Site (Former Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant), McCracken County, Paducah, Kentucky 42001, United States

Project Overview

The Paducah AI Energy & Data Center Campus is a landmark privately funded mega-development planned at the U.S. Department of Energy’s historic Paducah Site in Western Kentucky, representing a major transformation of a former nuclear uranium enrichment facility into a next-generation artificial intelligence and energy infrastructure hub. Selected through a competitive DOE process, the development is being led by Brookfield, which is expected to develop and operate more than 1.2 GW of critical AI compute infrastructure, while NextEra Energy will build, own, and operate dedicated power generation systems supporting the campus. The project is designed to accommodate large-scale AI training, inference, high-performance computing, and other power-intensive digital workloads requiring substantial and reliable electricity capacity. A key feature of the development is its integrated energy strategy, with plans for up to 4.6 GW of dedicated generation and energy storage capacity. This approach is intended to provide the campus with a resilient and scalable power supply while helping limit additional pressure on the local electricity grid and protecting regional ratepayers from infrastructure costs associated with the development. By repurposing an established industrial site with significant existing infrastructure, the project also demonstrates how legacy energy and industrial locations can be adapted for the rapidly expanding AI economy. The combination of dedicated generation, energy storage, and high-density computing infrastructure positions the Paducah campus as a potential self-sustaining digital infrastructure ecosystem. With its large-scale compute capacity and integrated energy model, the development reflects the growing convergence of artificial intelligence, data centers, and dedicated power infrastructure in the United States.

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