The US Department of Energy (DoE) has identified four sites where private sector firms will be invited to colocate datacenters and energy generation projects, in line with the Trump administration’s goal to boost AI development in America.
Earlier this year, the agency said it had picked out 16 potential sites that could be used for fast-track datacenter development, following executive orders issued by President Trump that federal land be made available to serve an anticipated need for more AI processing capability.
The four that have been finalized are the Idaho National Laboratory, Oak Ridge Reservation, Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, and Savannah River Site. These will now move forward to invite companies in the private sector to build AI datacenter projects plus any necessary energy sources to power them, including nuclear generation.
“By leveraging DoE land assets for the deployment of AI and energy infrastructure, we are taking a bold step to accelerate the next Manhattan Project – ensuring US AI and energy leadership,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said in a statement.
Ironically – or perhaps not – Oak Ridge Reservation was established in the early 1940s as part of the original Manhattan Project to develop the first atomic bomb, and is home to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) that operates the Frontier exascale supercomputer, and the Y-12 National Security Complex which supports US nuclear weapons programs.
The other sites are also involved with either nuclear research or atomic weapons in one way or another, which may hint at the administration’s intentions for how the datacenters should be powered.
All four locations are positioned to host new bit barns as well as power generation to bolster grid reliability, strengthen national security, and reduce energy costs, Wright claimed.
The DoE says that it received “enormous interest” in response to its earlier request for information (RFI) to inform the selection of these sites, which has helped to ensure the final locations are suitable for large-scale datacenters, new power facilities, and other necessary infrastructure.
Following the release of Trump’s AI Action Plan this week, the White House issued an updated executive order to enable the development of new datacenters and those vital energy resources to support them.
This opens up the use of federally owned land and resources for the speedy development of bit barns, defining a “Datacenter Project” as any facility that requires greater than 100 MW of hardware load dedicated to AI inference, training, simulation, or synthetic data generation.
An earlier directive cited by the DoE aims to “unleash American energy” by encouraging the exploration and production of energy resources across the US, including revoking certain prior policies related to environmental protection and clean energy development.
Another issued in May seeks to ensure the “rapid development, deployment, and use of advanced nuclear technologies to support national security objectives,” including the installation of reactors at DoE facilities. It sets out the goal of having an advanced nuclear reactor in operation at the first site “no later than 30 months” from the date of the order, which would imply by the end of 2027.
In light of this tight time frame, the DoE says that partners may be selected by the end of the year. Details regarding project scope, eligibility requirements, and submission guidelines for each site are expected to be released in the coming months. ®