Piketon: the 10-gigawatt PORTS Technology Campus

Project at a glance

• Branded name: PORTS Technology Campus
• Developer: SB Energy (subsidiary of SoftBank Group, Tokyo)
• Site: former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, Pike County, Ohio (Scioto Township, just south of Piketon)
• Site footprint: 640 acres of the 3,775-acre DOE-owned campus
• Capacity: 10 gigawatts at full buildout — more than half the operating capacity of all U.S. data centers combined
• Phase 1: $10 billion / 800 MW; 4,000 construction jobs / 300–400 operational jobs
• Full buildout: 10,000 construction jobs / 2,000 operational jobs
• Power supply: on-site 9.2 GW natural gas plant ($33.3 billion) — described by DOE as "the largest in the world"; plus $4.2B in new AEP Ohio transmission
• Funding: $33.3 billion Japanese investment under the U.S.-Japan Strategic Trade and Investment Agreement ($550B total commitment)
• Groundbreaking: March 20, 2026 (Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, plus SoftBank Chairman Masayoshi Son in attendance)
• Power flowing: AEP Ohio expects 2029
• Community contribution: $40 million SoftBank donation to local resources (schools, medical infrastructure)

The history: from Cold War uranium to AI

The Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant began enriching uranium in 1954 for the U.S. nuclear weapons program and later for commercial nuclear reactors. At its peak, the plant was one of three U.S. uranium enrichment facilities and the largest contributor to the Cold War nuclear arsenal. Enrichment ended in 2001. A multi-billion-dollar decontamination operation began ten years later and continues today — the site is contaminated with radioactive and other toxic materials, with some buildings reduced to rubble as of March 2026.

Sen. Shane Wilkin (R-Hillsboro), whose district includes the Portsmouth site, told The Statehouse News Bureau on the day of the groundbreaking: “It’s just going to be a generational change for this area, and we’ve struggled economically, there’s no doubt about that. Frankly, [Piketon] won the Cold War by the work they did here at this site.”

The Department of Energy listed the Portsmouth site as one of 16 federal sites released in 2025 for "rapid data center construction." The administration framed the partnership as part of the Genesis Mission to develop national AI infrastructure for scientific research and energy innovation, including fusion energy, quantum computing, and national security applications.

News of the project surfaced in January 2026 under the working name New Day Data Centers LLC, with a 640-acre proposal in Scioto Township. The DOE-SoftBank-AEP partnership was formally announced in February 2026, and groundbreaking followed within weeks.

What 10 gigawatts actually means

Ten gigawatts of continuous data-center load is unprecedented. For context:

• The total operating capacity of all online data centers in the United States is approximately 17–20 gigawatts. A single 10 GW campus would be more than half that total.
• The average Ohio home consumes 846 kilowatt-hours per month. 10 GW continuous = 7.2 million MWh per month = roughly the power consumption of 8.5 million Ohio homes.
• Ohio's largest existing power plant (the Cardinal Plant in Brilliant) generates roughly 1.8 GW. The PORTS gas plant alone (9.2 GW) would exceed five Cardinals.
• The project is comparable in scale to OpenAI’s Stargate facility next to Bristolville 25 in Lordstown.

SoftBank Chairman Masayoshi Son addressed concerns about ratepayer impact at the groundbreaking ceremony: “I will commit right here, right now, that we will protect the electricity bill. We will not take electricity away from the grid. We will generate the entire electricity use by ourselves.” The structure of the deal — on-site generation paired with transmission upgrades the developer is paying for — matches that commitment in writing. SB Energy has agreed to pay for the full $4.2 billion in new transmission, structured to avoid raising AEP Ohio residential rates.

This is materially different from earlier Ohio data centers (e.g., Hilliard's Cosgray Road project) where transmission costs would have shifted to ratepayers without the AEP 85% data-center tariff. Here, the cost-shift problem is addressed by structure, not just by tariff. Whether that promise survives 30 years of operation and grid changes is a separate question.

The job math

SoftBank has committed to 4,000 construction jobs in Phase 1 (the initial $10 billion, 800 MW expansion), scaling to 10,000 construction jobs over 4 years at full buildout. Permanent operational jobs are projected at 300–400 in Phase 1 and 2,000 at full buildout.

For Pike County, where unemployment historically runs above the Ohio average, those numbers are economically significant. Sen. Wilkin: “I would much rather need the workers and have the jobs than not have the jobs.”

The honest comparison: at Phase 1's $10 billion investment for 300–400 jobs, that's $25–$33 million in capital per permanent job. Even at full buildout, the ratio is roughly $15–$20 million per permanent job. Compared to typical industrial development (manufacturing plants, distribution centers), this is at the very high end of capital intensity per job. Whether that's a problem depends on whether you're measuring the project against its own announcements or against alternative uses of the same federal land.

Pike County's population is approximately 27,000. 2,000 operational jobs would represent roughly 7% of total county population, comparable to the impact a major manufacturing plant would have on a small county. The 4,000–10,000 construction-phase jobs would be regional (drawing from Scioto, Jackson, Ross, Adams, Highland counties as well).

The 25-megawatt amendment question

The Ohio constitutional amendment currently in active signature collection through July 1, 2026 would prohibit data centers above 25 megawatts. The PORTS Technology Campus, at 10,000 megawatts (10 gigawatts) at full buildout, exceeds that threshold by 400×. If voters approve the amendment in November 2026, the question becomes whether construction underway at the moment of approval is grandfathered.

Per attorney Austin Baurichter, who co-wrote the petition: “I don’t think there’s a hard and fast answer to that. What I’ve said before is my understanding of the law generally is that these things aren’t rear-view-mirror looking. Even if they try to put as many shovels in the ground before the petition goes into effect, it still is a good thing for Ohio because it stops them after that.”

The PORTS project broke ground on March 20, 2026 — before the amendment is on the ballot. Phase 1 (800 MW) construction will be well underway by November 2026 when voters decide. That construction would likely proceed regardless of the amendment’s passage. But the remaining 9.2 GW of the full buildout would face a constitutional question if voters approve the ban.

What about the radioactive site?

The Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant is a contaminated DOE site. Decontamination has been ongoing since 2011 and is not complete — the campus contains uranium hexafluoride processing residues, asbestos, lead, and groundwater contamination from decades of weapons-grade enrichment. The 640-acre data-center footprint sits on the cleaner portions of the site, but immediate adjacency to ongoing decontamination work raises questions:

• How is groundwater being managed during data-center cooling-water cycling near a contaminated aquifer?
• What happens to data-center construction crews exposed to legacy contaminants?
• What is the radiological monitoring program for cooling-water discharge into local watersheds?

As of April 2026, the Ohio EPA has not published a project-specific air or water permit for the PORTS Technology Campus. The federal-land lease structure means primary regulatory authority sits with the DOE rather than Ohio EPA, which is a different regulatory pathway than other Ohio hyperscale projects. Read the full Ohio data center water usage report.

Resident response

Pike County resident reaction is mixed and still developing. The local economic-development authority and some county officials have publicly welcomed the project, citing decades of post-Cold-War economic decline and the federal land’s long history as the area’s primary employer. Other residents and members of Conserve Ohio have raised concerns about water, transmission infrastructure, and the precedent of siting hyperscale projects on legacy DOE land elsewhere in Ohio (the Department of Energy holds 16 such sites nationwide).

As of April 2026, no formal moratorium or local opposition group has been announced specific to the PORTS project. This is in contrast to Butler, Portage, Trumbull, Franklin, and Shelby counties where named opposition groups and city-level moratoriums are active. The federal-land character of the Portsmouth site, plus the structural commitment to ratepayer protection through paid transmission, has reduced (so far) the typical organizing dynamic.

This page will be updated as the project moves through 2026 and 2027.

Sources

• U.S. Department of Energy — Fact Sheet: Affordable Energy Access in Ohio While Powering the Future of AI
• Ohio Statehouse News Bureau — Feds announce huge natural gas plant, data center project in southern Ohio (March 21, 2026)
• WOUB Public Media — Pike County to be site of country’s potentially largest data center (March 2026)
• Associated Press — Trump officials announce 10-gigawatt data center, gas plants for former Ohio uranium site
• AEP Ohio — $4.2B in new electric infrastructure announcement (March 20, 2026)
• Data Center Dynamics — SoftBank eyes 10GW data center at former DOE nuclear enrichment site in Ohio
• U.S.-Japan Strategic Trade and Investment Agreement — $550B Japan investment commitment