US-owned, privately developed uranium facility planned for Paducah. What to know
Paducah might soon be going back to its nuclear heyday.
A California-based nuclear startup first made public its plan to build a uranium enrichment facility last week in Western Kentucky’s McCracken County. The company, General Matter, has ties to PayPal co-founder, billionaire and Trump ally Peter Thiel and Scott Nolan, an early SpaceX engineer.
In an email sent to the Herald-Leader, the company said it was planning to “establish the nation’s first U.S.-owned, privately developed uranium enrichment facility.” The email said a formal program will be held Aug. 5 in Paducah with state leaders in tow like Gov. Andy Beshear, Sens. Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul, Rep. James Comer and others.
“Seventy-five years ago, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission selected Paducah to help lead the nation’s original enrichment efforts,” the email said. “We are proud to return to and rebuild this historic site to power a new era of American energy independence.”
The General Matter project announcement is separate but not unrelated from other nuclear energy development talks generating from Paducah.
The Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant was recently tapped by a federal agency as one prime for the White House’s artificial intelligence and energy plan. It is one of the nation’s largest former uranium enrichment facilities and is undergoing the necessary preparation for future redevelopment.
What is General Matter?
In April 2025, the California company launched itself on X, formerly known as Twitter. In a post, the company said it intended to enrich uranium — a process done to concentrate the element to power nuclear reactors for energy generation — because the country looks abroad for nuclear fuel when it shouldn’t.
In the year leading up to launch, the company was founded and funded within the San Francisco-based venture capital firm Founders Fund. The post said the launch team was made up of people from the fund’s defense tech company Anduril, Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Tesla, national labs and the Department of Defense.
Founders Fund was co-founded by Peter Thiel, who, Bloomberg reported, joined the General Matter board after the company launched. Thiel is listed as the company’s director in its July 22 filing to do business in the state, according to the Kentucky Secretary of State’s office.
He previously founded PayPal in the late 1990s and then launched a data-mining firm. The firm, Palantir, was recently under fire when former staff said it was working with the Trump administration to track migrants in real-time.
Thiel was a prominent supporter of now President Donald Trump and contributed to his 2016 campaign. Thiel said before the 2024 election he wouldn’t vote for Trump, but still has deep connections with the administration’s staff in the Department of Government Efficiency, the Department of Defense and others, according to Bloomberg.
As part of the former Biden administration’s Investing in America agenda, the Department of Energy said in December 2024 General Matter was on its list of companies the federal government can contract with “to procure low enriched uranium in order to incentivize the build-out of new uranium production capacity in the United States.”
Paducah site could be next Department of Energy project
In July, the Department of Energy dwindled down a list of potential sites across the country it could tap to lower energy costs and power artificial intelligence. Four pieces of federal land, including the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, are well-situated for a large-scale data center and new power generation, the U.S. Department of Energy said July 24.
The energy department is still considering which site to pick and which data companies it wants to partner with. By the end of the year, the department said, it will have more details on project scope and may have selected a site as well as a developer, tenant and energy company partners.
Other sites on the department’s radar include the Idaho National Laboratory, Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
Energy’s announcement comes after the Trump administration accelerated its plan to build the nation’s AI infrastructure, including the energy necessary to power it. In May, Trump signed a series of executive orders calling for reform at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that would speed up the approval process for new nuclear reactors and reconsider radiation standards.
State agency visits Paducah site
In mid-July, the Portsmouth Paducah Project Office met for the first time at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant with the Kentucky Nuclear Energy Development Authority. Earlier this year, lawmakers passed legislation to fund the authority they created in 2024.
The authority is meant to serve as a nonregulatory state agency on nuclear energy issues and development, according to Senate Bill 198, the 2024 piece of legislation that created it.
Governed by an advisory board of 22 voting and eight nonvoting members, the authority exists to aid interested communities in understanding nuclear energy, including the economic benefits associated with employment and tax revenue.
The authority provides information to the public on the state’s past and present nuclear energy sources and has other responsibilities to “Develop the capacity for nuclear energy economic development in the Commonwealth,” SB 198 said.
The authority’s recent visit to the Paducah site, according to a news release from the U.S. Department of Energy, was meant to establish the site’s “growing role in the nation’s energy renaissance” and connect its position for reindustrialization with the community’s and the state’s economic development vision.
“We knew it was important to host the first in-person Kentucky Nuclear Energy Development Authority in Paducah, where nuclear in Kentucky got its start,” said Rodney Andrews, the authority’s chair, in the release. “We felt it was important for (the authority’s) members to start our visit with a tour of the Paducah Site, where we learned about its important role in our nation’s history, as well as the work currently done at the site for redevelopment and expanded economic opportunities.”
At a facility adjacent to the gaseous diffusion plant, Global Laser Enrichment is building a uranium enrichment facility it hopes will be operational by 2030, according to WPSD.
This story was originally published August 1, 2025 at 12:34 PM.
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