Nowadays, Paducah, Kentucky — inhabitants 27,000 and residential to the Nationwide Quilt Museum — prides itself as “Quilt Metropolis.” However many years in the past, it was additionally known as the “Atomic City” — a moniker it may quickly regain as AI’s vitality wants deliver Paducah’s nuclear previous again to life.
The Division of Vitality (DOE) operated a uranium enrichment plant in Paducah for greater than 60 years till the plant shuttered in 2013 amid a downturn in nuclear vitality. The identical yr, Paducah was designated a UNESCO “creative city” for its quilts, a title it now boasts on its web site (together with a city-led initiative to make Paducah extra “thoughtful and type”).
Right this moment, the enrichment facility is within the highlight once more after a Peter Thiel-backed startup announced plans to revive the shuttered plant. In July, Donald Trump’s administration additionally chose Paducah as one of four sites the place it says it’ll companion with personal corporations to develop AI knowledge facilities and vitality tasks.
Huge Tech — thirsty for sufficient electrical energy to energy its AI ambitions — needs to make nuclear vitality cool once more. It’s all enjoying into the Trump administration’s plans to remake the US energy grid with out photo voltaic and wind energy. In the event that they handle to revitalize nuclear vitality in America, the US goes to want extra enriched uranium. And that provide chain may deliver large modifications to even small cities like Paducah.
Huge Tech — thirsty for sufficient electrical energy to energy its AI ambitions — needs to make nuclear vitality cool once more
Common Matter emerged from stealth mode earlier this yr, led by former SpaceX engineer Scott Nolan. Peter Thiel, who cofounded PayPal and the datamining firm Palantir that’s selling software to the Trump administration to surveil people who migrate to the US, joined General Matter’s board. And Nolan stood in the Oval Office with Trump on May 23rd as he signed govt orders ostensibly aimed at ushering in “a nuclear energy renaissance.”
At an August fifth occasion in Paducah, Common Matter shared particulars about its imaginative and prescient for the power. It says it’ll develop what it considers the “the nation’s first U.S.-owned, privately developed uranium enrichment facility” on the positioning and that it has signed “a multi-decade, one hundred-acre lease” with the DOE. Common Matter plans to start out enriching uranium in Paducah by the tip of the last decade and “produce the gas wanted for the following era of nuclear vitality, central to America’s aspirations in AI, manufacturing, and different important industries,” in line with a statement on X. (A DOE press release says enrichment operations aren’t deliberate till 2034, nonetheless, and that building is slated to start out in 2026.)
That doesn’t fairly reply some key questions concerning the firm’s plans. (Common Matter didn’t reply to a number of emails from The Verge.) Will the corporate depend on the identical outdated expertise the shuttered plant has all the time used or construct one thing new? If it does plan to revamp the power with fashionable expertise, does it plan to provide the identical sort of low-enriched uranium that America’s present nuclear reactors run on, or does it suppose it may be one of many first crops to provide extra extremely enriched uranium (known as HALEU) for superior reactors? The solutions to these questions will outline how formidable of a undertaking this actually is, and the impression it may have on energy grids throughout the US. The current DOE press launch notes that Common Matter is certainly one of 4 corporations the company chosen in October of final yr to provide enrichment services for HALEU, though the DOE additionally announced plans to contract Common Matter for low-enriched uranium in December.
Enrichment is only one step, and sort of a headache, within the nuclear provide chain. Uranium first must be mined and milled. Naturally occurring uranium has low ranges of the isotope U-235 that nuclear fission reactors break up to launch vitality. The uranium must be transformed into gasoline after which enriched to a couple of 5 % focus of U-235 to make gas for a conventional reactor. Following a increase in nuclear energy crops constructed within the Seventies and Nineteen Eighties, nonetheless, the trade misplaced floor to gas-fired energy crops producing electrical energy at decrease prices. Nuclear reactors and uranium enrichment crops shuttered throughout the US.
However now, the alternative is going on. Microsoft and Meta have inked offers over the previous yr to revive previous reactors. Different tech giants, together with Amazon and Google, have dedicated to supporting corporations designing superior reactors which might be purported to be smaller, simpler, and cheaper to construct — doubtlessly fixing lots of the issues which have plagued the nuclear vitality trade for years, if they will finally show that these applied sciences are going to have the ability to carry out at industrial scale.
That’s all driving up demand for uranium enrichment, now seen as a major bottleneck within the nuclear vitality provide chain. Common Matter isn’t the one operation in search of to complement uranium in Paducah. The DOE has had a deal with one other firm known as World Laser Enrichment (GLE) since 2016 to promote it leftover tails, depleted uranium, from years of enrichment for nuclear weapons and reactors on the website. GLE has been creating a brand new strategy to enrich uranium utilizing lasers that’s purported to be environment friendly sufficient to re-enrich uranium tails in order that they can be utilized to make gas once more. Common Matter equally plans to re-enrich depleted uranium tails in Paducah, according to the DOE press release, though we nonetheless don’t know what sort of expertise it is going to use to take action.
Laser expertise has but for use to complement uranium at industrial scale. Over the previous decade, there simply wasn’t sufficient demand for extra uranium enrichment capability within the US to maneuver ahead, says Nima Ashkeboussi, vice chairman of presidency relations and communications at GLE. Then Russia — a significant provider for nuclear gas globally — invaded Ukraine, and in 2024, and the US barred imports of uranium from Russia. GLE utilized for a license in June to lastly begin re-enriching the depleted uranium tails at a website adjoining to the Paducah plant, and expects to listen to again from the Nuclear Regulatory Fee in about 18 months.
If all goes effectively, GLE plans to have its facility up and working by 2030 so it could begin making the low-enriched uranium historically utilized by present nuclear reactors. If no less than one of many superior reactors makes it to industrial operation, Ashkeboussi says that’ll be a market sign that it could begin producing extra extremely enriched uranium (known as HALEU) that next-generation reactors want. For now, solely Russia has the aptitude to commercially produce HALEU. However already, knowledge facilities and AI have been a significant driver in reinvigorating nuclear vitality, Ashkeboussi tells The Verge. “We see that as an enormous progress potential,” he says.
Each the Biden and Trump administrations have labored towards onshoring the nuclear provide chain once more. The US at the moment has the capability to enrich about a third of the uranium its nuclear reactors want. For Joe Biden, nuclear vitality supported US local weather objectives of slashing planet-heating air pollution by transitioning away from fossil fuels within the energy grid. Trump is sabotaging US climate commitments and renewable energy projects, however nonetheless says nuclear vitality has a job to play with regards to ensuring US tech corporations have sufficient electrical energy to dominate the AI market.
The plans for Paducah appear to suit neatly into the Trump administration’s vision for AI, which it released final month. Briefly, the plan contains fast-tracking the event of energy-hungry knowledge facilities along side primarily fossil gas and nuclear energy crops by limiting environmental reviews.
“It appears their mindset is building and manufacturing in any respect prices.”
The frenzy to construct, particularly because the Trump administration concurrently guts the Environmental Protection Agency and Nuclear Regulatory Commission, has raised some flags over how a lot oversight and neighborhood participation there will likely be with these new tasks. “I don’t have any confidence in what the administration is doing to guard public well being and security. It appears their mindset is building and manufacturing in any respect prices,” says Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear energy security on the Union of Involved Scientists that has been important of the environmental and security risks nuclear energy can pose.
Nuclear vitality has been a divisive expertise amongst individuals involved about local weather change and air pollution. It’s a carbon pollution-free supply of electrical energy. However uranium mining close to the Grand Canyon has already sparked opposition from environmental advocates and the Havasupai Tribe over the way it may have an effect on close by communities and the water sources on which they rely. And the federal authorities has but to resolve many years of wrangling over where to store radioactive waste from nuclear reactors.
Including to these considerations, the Trump administration needs to construct on federal lands and even repurpose polluted Superfund websites for all this infrastructure. The shuttered enrichment plant in Paducah itself is a Superfund site, which suggests it’s on a listing of locations so contaminated that the Environmental Safety Company has stepped in to prioritize their cleanup. That legacy reveals the pitfalls and hurdles that policymakers and corporations must attempt to keep away from in the event that they need to deliver nuclear vitality again to small-town USA.
“No matter what’s taking place with the Trump administration, this can be a massively bipartisan enterprise relating to uranium enrichment. There’s a number of assist for it proper now. I believe there’s a number of momentum to actually get it proper,” says Rowen Value, senior coverage advisor for nuclear vitality on the nonprofit Third Means, which helps nuclear vitality.
Native lawmakers, for his or her half, have proven optimism over Paducah doubtlessly enjoying a pivotal role in the future of AI and vitality within the US. Common Matter’s $1.5 billion proposed project in Paducah is meant to create 140 jobs, according to Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY).
“Only a few years in the past, the concept of Kentucky main the following wave of nuclear vitality improvement might have appeared formidable,” Sen. Danny Carroll (R-KY) wrote in an op-ed within the Lexington Herald-Chief. “Paducah is once more on the heart of America’s nuclear future.”
