Data centers may be coming to KY, but we need to talk about how to fuel them | Opinion

Data centers that supply power-hungry artificial intelligence are currently a hot topic in Kentucky. Energy, much of it produced by burning coal, is comparatively inexpensive in our commonwealth, which is what data center developers seek. Most of us know the pros and cons of burning coal to produce energy for homes and industries alike. However controversial coal may be, less controversial is the fact that it cannot fuel our world into eternity. What will replace coal, and what will run those contentious power-hungry data centers?

Nuclear energy, apparently. It is true that nuclear power generation has come a long way since the 1979 partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. So I fear it less, even though the waste issue remains unsolved; spent fuel rods are usually stored on-site, posing indefinite risks to communities. The Kentucky Public Service Commission (PSC) refers to today’s version as small modular reactors, which sound harmless enough.

Currently, the Kentucky Public Service Commission is on a “listening tour” to learn how Kentuckians feel about bringing nuclear energy, now evidently in small modular bits, to communities around the commonwealth.

PSC, thanks for asking! Since you asked, here’s how I feel:

The problem with the nuclear option is not the option itself, but that other, far better, options are being ignored. I recently learned that in the early 2020s, an important technological transformation occurred: the cost of producing solar energy dropped below the cost of burning fossil fuels (no, the hidden climate cost is not included in fossil fuel’s tally).

We have China to thank for manufacturing and exporting billions of inexpensive solar panels for this technological milestone. Drive on I64 between Lexington and Winchester and you can’t miss the acres upon acres of solar farms erected not by individuals (those are rooftop arrays) but by electric utilities. Even Kentucky’s electric utilities, once powered exclusively by coal, got the memo that solar generation is cheaper.

So, if since the 2020s the cheapest power comes from pointing a photovoltaic cell at the sun, why on earth would Kentucky choose to fast-track nuclear energy as “the solution” for those power-hungry AI data centers? Might one reason be the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant? That plant stands to gain much in Kentucky’s rush to accommodate data centers, as it is poised to become the very first place where nuclear energy is produced in our commonwealth.

Paducah is represented by State Sen. Danny Carroll, who sponsored the creation of the now-approved Nuclear Energy Development Authority. Now he is sponsoring Senate Bill 57 to create and fund the Nuclear Reactor Site Readiness Program to ease the application and permitting costs with the federal government, which run in the millions of dollars. And that means a portion of my taxpayer dollars would go toward facilitating the nuclear path forward, when a far cheaper, far safer one is already fully feasible. Kentucky Public Service Commission: I’m not ok with that.

I urge all commissioners, everyone, actually, to read “Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization,” by Bill McKibben, published in 2025.

Kelli Carmean is a local horsewoman, and a recently retired Eastern Kentucky University professor.

This story was originally published March 9, 2026 at 1:37 PM.