Brookfield and NextEra partner to develop a $100B, 1.2GW+ AI data center campus at a former DOE uranium-enrichment site in Kentucky, set to open in 2032
The companies plan to develop a data center campus on the Energy Department's Paducah site in western Kentucky
Wall Street JournalRobb M. Stewart
Context & Ripple Effects
This is a concrete follow-through on Brookfield's earlier plan to assemble land, data centers, and power assets for AI through its proposed AI infrastructure buildout. The partnership adds NextEra and a former Energy Department site to that strategy, with a long 2032 delivery horizon.
Brookfield and NextEra take responsibility for developing a $100B AI campus exceeding 1.2GW at the Paducah site, committing capital and project execution capacity years before the targeted opening.
The former DOE uranium-enrichment site is repositioned as a prospective AI-infrastructure location, while the Energy Department becomes central to enabling reuse of the property.
Second-order effects
The project increases the premium on sites that can credibly combine land, power arrangements, and a financeable development path; rival developers will have to differentiate on those inputs rather than on data-center shells alone.
A second large Kentucky AI-campus plan reinforces demand for regional construction, interconnection, and power-development capacity, while raising execution pressure on projects competing for the same ecosystem.
Third-order effects
If DOE-backed or DOE-site developments continue, federal industrial properties could become a distinct pipeline for AI infrastructure rather than merely legacy assets awaiting remediation or redevelopment.
The long gap between announcement and opening underscores a structural constraint of the AI buildout: headline capacity depends on financing, power delivery, and construction all arriving on schedule, not simply on demand for compute.
The trend: AI infrastructure is increasingly being developed as long-duration, power-led utility-scale real estate, with capital providers, energy companies, and public-sector sites becoming core participants.
@StockMKTNewz a decommissioned uranium enrichment site with existing grid infrastructure and transmission already built is close to a perfect site. this is the reuse case people say they want, brownfield instead of farmland, and paired with its own generation. fascinating
.@SecretaryWright on data centers: “Blue states have 50% higher electricity prices than red states... Places that develop data centers...those are the places that will see electricity prices go down, not up.” [video]
@sonderling47 Acting Secretary Keith Sonderling on x
When American @ENERGY is dominant, American Workers are dominant and thanks to @POTUS' America First Energy Agenda, we're producing more natural gas and good-paying jobs for all Americans. 🇺🇸
SCOOP: Power utility NextEra Energy Inc. is teaming up with Brookfield on a more than $100 billion transformation of a shuttered Energy Department Cold War uranium-enrichment facility in Kentucky into a data center campus with a generating plant.
The privately funded effort, which will include construction of 2 gigawatts of natural gas-fired power, comes as the Trump administration seeks to address surging power demand from data centers that are provoking considerable political opposition.
.@SecretaryWright announces a redevelopment of @ENERGY's Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Kentucky: “There will be a lot of new natural gas power plants, a large data center, thousands of jobs, and tens of billions of dollars of investment in rural Western Kentucky.” 🇺🇸 [video]
“The more than $100 billion privately funded investment, one of the largest in Kentucky's history, is expected to create approximately 8,000 construction jobs and 600 permanent jobs.” https://www.energy.gov/...