TL;DR · 30-second read

The Short Version

A large piece of southern Ohio that once made fuel for nuclear bombs is being turned into what officials call the world’s largest artificial intelligence computing center. The Japanese investment firm SoftBank is paying for it.

Across the United States, neighbors are protesting projects like this over power, water and noise. Here, many locals are cheering. The land is already industrial, the power lines were built for a plant that once used as much electricity as New York City, and the area badly needs jobs.

The hard part is still ahead: building a gas power plant and 18 small nuclear reactors to run it.

Spotlight on America reported in a June 19, 2026 story published by The National Desk that Pike County, Ohio, is embracing plans for what officials call the largest AI data center in the world. The project will be built on the site of the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant (PORTS), a Cold War-era uranium enrichment plant, and renamed the PORTS Technology Campus.

At a March 20 announcement attended by Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Assistant Secretary of Environmental Management Tim Walsh and other officials, backers described a campus combining the data center with a $33 billion natural gas power plant and 18 small modular reactors (SMRs), compact nuclear units built to standardized designs. SoftBank is funding the project, with a budget cited at $1.5 trillion, and SB Energy co-CEO Rich Hossfeld said 35,000 workers will build it.

Executive Summary

The PORTS Technology Campus pairs a record-scale AI data center with its own dedicated generation — a $33 billion gas plant and 18 SMRs — on federal land the Department of Energy is already spending $14 billion to $18 billion to clean up. Local leaders describe the site as a “perfect fit” because it inherits water and grid infrastructure built for one of the largest industrial electricity consumers in American history.

The project matters beyond Ohio because it arrives as opposition to data centers spreads from Maine to Washington. Pike County shows why some sites draw far less resistance: the land is already industrial, some nearby residential parcels are unsafe for homes but acceptable for industry, and the county badly needs jobs. What the welcome does not settle is whether the new generation can be financed, licensed and built on a timeline that matches the computing load.

Why a Cold War Site Defuses the Usual Data Center Fight

The objections filling hearing rooms from Columbus to Scranton are specific: data centers draw water and electricity residents rely on, strain local grids, and add noise and exhaust from backup generators like those running in Northern Virginia. Pike County’s site answers several of those objections before they are raised, because the region’s heaviest industrial footprint is already there. The Portsmouth plant, according to Steve Shepherd of the Southern Ohio Diversification Initiative, used about 3% of the nation’s electricity — roughly what New York City used — and consumed 30,000 to 40,000 gallons of water a day, which he said matches what the new campus is expected to need.

Land is the second mechanism. Elsewhere, a data center often means rezoning farmland or open space next to homes. Here, the land is a federal industrial reservation being cleared with Department of Energy money, and nearby residential parcels that a recent report found carry unsafe levels of radioactive contamination are, according to local official Jennifer Chandler, acceptable for industrial use. A dozen of those properties have already been bought for the campus footprint. The project does not displace a use residents value; for some families it may offer a way off land they should not be living on.

The third mechanism is economic. Pike County ranks third-lowest in Ohio for per-capita income, and a 35,000-worker construction effort reshapes a rural economy. Together, these give substance to Shepherd’s claim that the site is “a model for the country”: legacy industrial sites with existing transmission corridors, water systems and industrial zoning face fewer of the objections now stalling greenfield projects. The limit is that few sites anywhere carry infrastructure sized like this one.

An Inherited Grid Is Not an Inherited Power Supply

The 3% figure describes what the plant drew during its operating life, not what the grid can deliver today. Existing transmission corridors and substation sites are a genuine head start — securing rights-of-way is among the slowest steps in any grid project — but the electricity itself still has to be generated. Uranium enrichment at Portsmouth ended in 2001, and whether the lines that served it remain usable at this scale has not been published.

That is why the plan pairs the data center with dedicated generation. Building a $33 billion gas plant and 18 reactors on site is the most direct answer to the grid-strain objection, because the campus would not compete with households for existing supply. But it shifts risk rather than removing it. A gas plant of that cost needs pipeline capacity and produces its own emissions, moving the air-quality question from backup generators to a primary power station.

The reactors carry the longest lead time. SMRs are still early in commercial deployment in North America, and each project requires federal licensing before it can operate; 18 units is a fleet, not a pilot. If computing capacity comes online before the reactors do, the gas plant or the regional grid would have to carry the load in the meantime. No capacity figure for the gas plant or the reactors, and no sequencing plan, accompanied the announcement. That, not local acceptance, is the test Pike County has yet to pass.

Superlatives Without Megawatts

The announcement leaned heavily on scale: “the largest AI data center on earth,” a facility “bigger than any facility ever built in world history,” a budget cited at $1.5 trillion. Those claims may prove accurate, but none came with the measures the industry uses to compare projects — megawatts of computing load, number of buildings, phase dates or named tenants.

The dollar figures illustrate the gap. The $33 billion gas plant is a small fraction of $1.5 trillion; the remainder would presumably fund reactors, buildings, computing hardware and supporting infrastructure over many years, but no breakdown was offered. For suppliers of turbines, transformers, cooling systems and chips, a headline figure without a schedule signals intent, not an order book.

None of this diminishes the site’s real advantages. It means the project is best judged on the disclosures still to come rather than on the size of the tent on announcement day.

Background

The Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant near Piketon, in Pike County, Ohio, was one of three US gaseous diffusion plants built to enrich uranium during the Cold War. Enrichment ended in 2001, and the Department of Energy is now spending $14 billion to $18 billion to decontaminate and dismantle the site. The Southern Ohio Diversification Initiative (SODI) is the local organization charged with redeveloping it.

The project arrives as opposition to AI data centers grows nationwide, driven by concerns over water use, grid strain, noise and backup-generator emissions. SoftBank, a Japanese investment group, backs the effort alongside SB Energy, its affiliated energy developer.

Sources

Source: Amid nationwide backlash, an Ohio county welcomes the world’s largest AI data center — The National Desk’s Spotlight on America on the PORTS Technology Campus planned for Pike County, Ohio.