A number of large tech companies and hyperscalers attended a meeting about building a data center on Department of Energy (DOE) land.

The companies attended an industry day focused on soliciting proposals at the US National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina. The DOE is open to proposals for AI data centers and/or energy infrastructure.

Among those in attendance were Microsoft, CoreWeave, Google, QTS, Meta, Digital Realty, Oracle, Crusoe, Arup, Pegasus Group, Submer, and Pure Storage. On the energy side, also of note were Bloom Energy, The Nuclear Company, Oppenheimer Energy, Deep Atomic, Oklo, GE Vernova, and Terrestrial Energy.

Hyperscaler Amazon was not in attendance. The full list is available below.

Savannah River is one of a number of locations the Department of Energy has said could host private AI data centers. Following Executive Orders from Presidents Biden and Trump, the DOE announced 16 possible sites last April.

In July, it highlighted four locations as the furthest along, with SRS among them.

At SRS, there are ten tracts of land potentially capable of supporting a data center and/or power generation facilities totaling 3,103 acres. Projects “must include new energy generation.”

In terms of power, the site currently has access to several 115kV lines and a 20MW DOE-owned biomass combined cycle plant. Two commercially-owned 75MW solar power generation facilities with BESS are currently in development, with operations scheduled for 2029.

"I am tasked to oversee the modern-day Manhattan Project," NNSA principal deputy administrator Scott Pappano said in opening remarks during the industry day.

"Think about the Manhattan Project - a strategic imperative, at the time, to essentially end WWII, right? We are back in that sort of strategic national imperative again today. We are in a global race right now for AI compute power and the energy that's needed to drive that. That's the world we face today."

He added: "We think that Savannah River is a prime opportunity to kind of bring that ability to get AI compute and power together, because we have the land to do it."

With the site's long history of nuclear weapons manufacturing (it was used to produce tritium and is still used as part of the nuclear program), the location is ideally suited for nuclear power, Pappano said.

"Ultimately, the goal is to get the AI compute data space there, the data center. Secondary mission is to drive the power that gives the fuel that, if we will. And I really want to drive nuclear power there. That's the most important thing. If I need to go bridge something with non-nuclear power to get started, okay, we'll listen to those proposals as well."

Peter Mandelstam at the Energy Office of Energy Dominance Financing (the renamed and shrunk DOE Loan Office) said that loans were available for nuclear projects and other power efforts.

"I oversee within the EDF most of the data center projects, there's obviously a lot of good, virtuous potential cooperation with you folks in the nuclear industry," he said. "Come talk to us about data centers, [it is a] priority of the President. Data center projects are challenging, but we like to think of ourselves as creative bankers."

As for existing power infrastructure, Jeff Hynds, SRS infrastructure integration manager, explained: "We have triple redundancy at Savannah River site. We're fed by Dominion Energy South Carolina on three 115 KV lines. All of the grid within Savannah River is owned by DOE. It's currently under lease to Dominion Energy, and then we have a contract with them for the maintenance and the operations of that system."

The site currently uses about 50MW at peak with an annual consumption of 300,000 megawatt hours. This could increase by around half due to new missions, including plutonium pit production.

SRS has a 20MW biomass facility on site, generating about 85,000 megawatt hours a year, and has two 75MW solar farms expected to launch in 2029. Those are expected to produce around 115,000 megawatt hours each, annually.

The data center can be purely commercial, but speakers said that there was an opportunity to run NNSA workloads - with some of the world's most powerful supercomputers dedicated to nuclear weapons simulations.

"We produce the nation's nuclear stockpile, we design it, we produce it, we support it, and then when we're done with that, we retire those weapons, and we make sure all that material is safe. A ton of computing is required for that," Si Hammond, NNSA program director of advanced computing, said.

"We've been investing in AI for probably in the order of about 15 years, and the program that I lead now has a team of people that do that [very significantly]. Let's just say we're in a unique time in the world with our adversaries."

He continued: "We're open for partnerships. We're busy. We're very busy. I can't remember what a weekend looks like anymore. It is an exciting time to be at the department working on this stuff.... I'd probably have to get out the Men in Black memory eraser if I told you what we really did."

The full list of attendees:

• 59llc
• Administratum
• Aecon
• Aecon Technical Services, Inc
• AI Laboratories
• Aiken Chamber of Commerce
• Aiken County
• Aiken Technical College
• Amentum
• Ameresco
• Angayut LLC
• Antares
• ARC Clean Technology, Inc.
• Arcadis
• Arup
• ATA Energy
• Augusta Metro Chamber of Commerce
• BKV
• Blackstar Diversified Enterprises
• Bloom Energy
• BlueWater Strategies
• Brookfield
• BWXT Advanced Technologies
• C.A. Murren and Sons Company, Inc.
• Centrica
• City of North Augusta, SC
• ClearPath
• CoreWeave
• Crew Logistics
• Crusoe Energy
• Deep Atomic
• Deloitte
• Development Authority of Augusta Georgia
• Digital Realty
• Edgerunner Ventures
• Elio Energy Development LLC
• Embervault
• Energy Communities Alliance
• Eurotech Ventures
• F&FC
• Far West Federal
• First Global Technology
• Fluor
• Flux Core
• GE Vernova
• General Atomics
• Google
• Guidehouse
• Hadron Energy
• Hensel Phelps
• Holtec Government Services
• IP3 International
• Jacobs
• Kanin Energy
• Keysight Technologies
• Levitate Inc
• Longenecker & Associates
• LS Power
• M.C. Dean, Inc.
• Maximus Federal Services
• McKinsey & Co
• Meta
• Metatomic Inc.
• Microsoft
• MicroTech
• MKA Critical Power
• Morgan Lewis
• NEI
• Newcleo SPA
• Nexent Capital
• NextEra Energy Resources
• NuGen LLC
• nVision Energy
• nXSolutions
• Oklo Inc.
• Olsson, Inc.
• Oppenheimer Energy
• Oracle
• PARKER TIDE CORP.
• Pegasus Group, LLC
• Pure Storage
• QTS Data Centers
• Quanta Government Solutions
• Realta Fusion
• Rising Tide Development Strategies
• Sacriste Empire AI Professional Services
• Sargent & Lundy
• Savannah River National Laboratory
• South Carolina Department of Commerce
• Southern Company
• SRSCRO
• Submer Inc
• Sunbird Software
• Supermicro, Inc.
• Terra Innovatum
• Terrestrial Energy
• The Nuclear Company
• TiByte
• TK Dilus Platform
• Trace3 Government
• TRC Environmental Corporation
• Trillium H2 Power, LLC
• Tryfacta Inc.
• usc aiken
• Valar Atomics
• veolia
• Westinghouse