Beneficial Reuse & Land Transfers
2,532 Acres transferred at Oak Ridge alone for private-sector reuse | $10B+ In private capital investment announced at transferred Oak Ridge acreage | 25+ Businesses established on formerly contaminated federal land at Oak Ridge | 4 EM sites selected for AI data center & energy infrastructure development |
The United States faces a challenge: power the AI race, restore domestic nuclear energy leadership, and rebuild the industrial base that supports national security. Meeting that challenge requires land, infrastructure, and a skilled workforce and EM has been building all three for decades.
EM's legal mandate is to clean up the environmental legacy of the nation's nuclear weapons program that includes addressing contaminated soil and groundwater, aging facilities, and millions of gallons of radioactive waste spread across sites in 11 states. The practical result of that cleanup work is something larger, it is the systematic liberation of federal land from environmental liability, returning them to productive use for communities and American industry.
That direct connection between cleanup progress and economic development is now at the heart of EM's strategic vision supporting the Trump administration's executive agenda on nuclear energy and AI infrastructure.
“Thanks to President Trump, the U.S. government is leveraging its assets—like our federal lands—to add power generation, create jobs, and ensure the United States wins the AI race.”
— U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright
The former gaseous diffusion plants at Paducah, Kentucky and Portsmouth, Ohio followed a nearly identical path as Oak Ridge through the Cold War and is now following a similar path toward reindustrialization. Both sites enriched uranium for the nation's nuclear arsenal for decades, and both were left with massive contamination footprints when enrichment operations ended.
At Paducah, EM cleanup progress is directly enabling a new chapter of American nuclear energy. In August 2025, DOE announced the signing of a lease with General Matter to develop a new domestic uranium enrichment facility on a 100-acre parcel of cleaned Paducah land. The facility will restore domestic uranium enrichment capability that is critical to the reshoring and domestic expansion of energy for advanced manufacturing and AI data centers.
The Paducah Site is also partnering with Global Laser Enrichment who plans to build the Paducah Laser Enrichment Facility on land adjacent to the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant.
“These agreements and partnerships turn what was considered an environmental challenge into a critical national asset. The work being done at Paducah and across the nation is at the heart of the nuclear renaissance this administration is collectively working toward.”
— EM Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Joel Bradburne
At Portsmouth, Oklo is building two advanced nuclear reactors on land EM transferred to the community reuse organization. SB Energy is leasing land on the Portsmouth Site to construct the world's largest AI data center.
No EM site better illustrates the power of beneficial reuse than Oak Ridge, Tennessee. For more than 40 years, the East Tennessee Technology Park (ETTP), originally known as the Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant, enriched uranium for the Manhattan Project and the Cold War. When the plant closed in 1987, it left behind a massive footprint of contaminated buildings, soil, and groundwater.
Twenty years of systematic cleanup by the Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management transformed that liability into one of the nation's most compelling reindustrialization success stories. In 2024, EM completed all major field cleanup work at ETTP, and it has continued to transfer former federal land to the community to generate new opportunities and boost economic development in the region. EM has transferred more than 2,500 acres for private-sector reuse. That land has since attracted more than 25 businesses, with more than $10 billion in capital investments announced, including Orano USA's selection of Oak Ridge as the site of a new multibillion-dollar domestic uranium enrichment facility — the single largest investment in Tennessee history. Other major announcements include TRISO-X’s fuel fabrication facility, LIS Technologies’ enrichment facility, Oklo Inc’s fuel reprocessing center, Kairos Power’s next generation reactors, and Radiant’s micro reactor production plant.
In December 2025, EPA and DOE confirmed that more than 16,000 acres of the broader Oak Ridge Reservation do not require environmental cleanup, simplifying future land transfers and further accelerating the pace of beneficial reuse across the site.
“Oak Ridge is the first Manhattan Project site to close its nuclear lifecycle and open a new era of advanced nuclear in Tennessee — tearing down old, contaminated buildings and creating space to build up new nuclear.”
— EM Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Joel Bradburne
That vision became concrete action on Sept. 30, 2025, when EM and the Office of Science issued a Request for Proposals seeking private-sector partners to build and power AI data centers at the Oak Ridge Reservation, one of four EM sites selected by DOE for public-private AI infrastructure development in response to the January 2025 executive orders on data center permitting and nuclear deployment.
Marty Bryan, right, director of Kairos Power Tennessee Site Integration, details construction activities underway for the company’s Hermes 1 demonstration reactor to Assistant Secretary of Environmental Management Tim Walsh at Oak Ridge.