The Donald Trump administration’s secretaries of Energy, Commerce and Interior are scheduled to announce a big redevelopment project Friday at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio as part of a U.S.–Japan Strategic Trade and Investment Agreement.
That is according to a media advisory put out this week by DOE.
According to rumors circulating at the Waste Management Symposia last week in Phoenix, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright could announce an artificial intelligence data center at the Portsmouth Site in Piketon, Ohio.
During the Friday afternoon ceremony, Wright will be joined by Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, Secretary of Interior Doug Burgum along with Masayoshi Son, Chairman and CEO of SoftBank Group Corp., a global technology company.
The word on the street around Piketon is that SB Energy, a U.S. affiliate of SoftBank, will develop a natural gas power plant to provide electricity for the data center, a source said Wednesday. During last week’s Phoenix conference, the DOE Assistant Secretary of Environmental Management Tim Walsh said natural gas will be the initial power source for certain data centers inside the DOE nuclear complex.
The longer-term plan envisions new nuclear power at DOE sites for data centers. Oklo is one such company planning to build a small modular reactor next door to the Portsmouth Site. Oklo is also putting together plans to provide power to Meta data centers in the region.