Economy

Demolition clears way for $37 billion energy hub at Ohio's Portsmouth Site

Piketon, Ohio • November 11, 2026 • By Press Pass USA

An aerial view of the Portsmouth Site in Piketon, Ohio

Photo: U.S. Department of Energy — file photo

Crews are tearing down Cold War-era uranium enrichment buildings at the U.S. Department of Energy's Portsmouth Site in Piketon, Ohio, clearing ground for what the department calls the nation's largest energy megasite — a $37 billion American Energy Hub pairing large-scale power generation with a super intelligence computing center.

The Energy Department highlighted the work in a new video released Tuesday, showing Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management Tim Walsh meeting with Portsmouth Site workers who are demolishing the old nuclear facilities to make way for what the department describes as a new economic future for southern Ohio.

The department said the project is meant to turn the site's environmental liabilities into a long-term economic asset for the region, creating career opportunities for future generations as the sprawling Pike County property transitions from cleanup to reindustrialization.

The price tag attached to the project keeps climbing. Walsh toured the site in October and touted a $33 billion plan; the department now puts the investment at $37 billion. The hub is one of three Energy Department properties nationally — along with sites in Paducah, Kentucky, and Oak Ridge, Tennessee — being redeveloped as American Energy Hubs, drawing a combined $650 billion in private investment across the three locations, according to the department.

The Piketon project grew out of a public-private partnership announced in March between the Energy Department, the Commerce Department, SoftBank's SB Energy and AEP Ohio. The plan calls for 10 gigawatts of new power generation — most of it natural gas — alongside a 10-gigawatt data center campus on the former gaseous diffusion plant site, with power targeted to start flowing by 2029. State officials have said the project will bring more than 2,000 jobs to Pike County, where the unemployment rate, at 4.8%, was already the fifth-highest of Ohio's 88 counties.

The Portsmouth Site, a 3,777-acre federal property in Scioto Township, enriched uranium from 1954 until the gaseous diffusion plant closed in 2001. Much of the site has since been shut down and put through decontamination and demolition, a cleanup effort that has employed local workers for decades — and that the Energy Department now says is giving way to one of the largest industrial investments in Ohio history.

Sources: U.S. Department of Energy, "EnergyCast: Portsmouth Enters New Era With Nation's Largest Energy, SI Center" (Nov. 10, 2026); Scioto Valley Guardian, "Portsmouth Site demolition clears way for $37B energy hub" (Nov. 11, 2026); Data Center Dynamics, "SoftBank eyes 10GW data center at former DOE nuclear enrichment site in Ohio" (2026); Ohio University, "PORTSfuture groundwork continues to pay off with job growth at Pike County plant" (2026).