Rendering of the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant.
SB Energy and Softbank Group recently announced a unique public-private partnership to construct the world’s largest artificial intelligence data center. The PORTS Technology Campus will be constructed on leased land at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Portsmouth site in Ohio. Work is now underway on one of the largest infrastructure and energy projects ever announced in the United States.
The project is being developed at the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant site in Piketon, Ohio. Currently, the DOE is performing a $5.87 billion environmental remediation and demolition project at the 3,777-acre site. The operation, managed by the Office of Environmental Management, must remediate 400 contaminated facilities along with extensive soil/groundwater cleanup before data center construction begins.
The future development includes a planned 10-gigawatt data center campus paired with 9.2-gigawatt natural gas-fired units. SB Energy is investing $4.2 million in grid upgrades and new transmission lines, with a promise not to raise electricity rates.
Phase one of the data center project is projected to cost between $33 to $40 billion which could grow to a $500 billion investment, potentially making it one of the most expensive construction projects in the world.
The scale of the project is expected to create significant long-term demand for skilled union labor across multiple crafts, including Boilermakers. According to the DOE, early estimates project approximately 10,000 construction jobs during phase one, with 2,000 permanent operational positions.
Local 105 (Chillicothe, Ohio) BM-ST Joe Ledford said the local will need help with all the upcoming work. This isn’t the only new project coming to the region, but it is the biggest. He said they’ll man the job with current members, travelers and new recruits.
“The data center work, we won’t get much with that. But the power generation— that’s us,” Ledford said. “We’re going to have to recruit and bring in more members to fill this job. We have a lot of other new work starting in the area as well. I can see our membership doubling, if not more, in the next two to three years.
If the full project moves forward as proposed, long-term estimates indicate the project could ultimately support as many as 35,000 construction jobs and 2,500 operational jobs over multiple decades of development and maintenance work.
Bechtel has been selected for the data center portion of the project, and Kiewit is the contractor for construction of the power generation facilities. In addition to the initial construction buildout, data centers typically require major equipment refreshes and upgrades approximately every five years, creating the potential for ongoing maintenance, retrofit and expansion work well into the future.
