Research · October 29, 2026

NVIDIA × PreussenElektra: AI Factories on Germany's Former Nuclear Sites

On October 21, 2026, NVIDIA and PreussenElektra GmbH said they will assess whether the sites of former nuclear power plants in Germany can host AI data centers — the facilities NVIDIA calls “AI factories.” PreussenElektra, the E.ON subsidiary responsible for decommissioning and dismantling eight nuclear power plants in Germany, brings knowledge of the land, the existing infrastructure, and the local framework conditions to the assessment. NVIDIA, as technology partner, will evaluate what AI factories require and what technical site concepts could look like. Together, the two companies aim to determine which locations, and under what conditions, merit more detailed project work.

The logic is about the ground, not the reactor. Former power plant sites offer large industrial areas, high-capacity grid connections, and established infrastructure — the three inputs that are hardest to secure for a new data center build. For a developer, finding land is only half the job; securing electricity delivery is a separate one, and grid-access waits have already delayed data center projects in parts of Europe. A retired plant site starts with a grid connection in place, which can cut both infrastructure work and connection time versus breaking ground on an unconnected plot.

What this is — and what it is not. The assessment is explicitly open-ended and represents only a first step: the technical, infrastructural, economic, and regulatory prerequisites for potential projects. No specific investment or site decisions have been made, no capacity target has been disclosed, and the companies have not said how any future data centers would be powered. This is not a plan to restart reactors, and it is not a claim that the data centers would run on nuclear power. Germany permanently shut its last operational reactors on April 15, 2023, and roughly 30 former nuclear plants are now being dismantled across the country; PreussenElektra’s eight sites are in various stages of that process. The reuse concept concerns the industrial land and the infrastructure left behind — not the reactors themselves.

“Our former power plant sites have valuable industrial infrastructure and offer opportunities for new, future-oriented uses,” said Guido Knott, chairman of the PreussenElektra management board. “Together with Nvidia, we intend to conduct a sound assessment of whether and how these conditions can be leveraged for AI factories.” Markus Hacker, NVIDIA’s senior regional director, added that “AI factories require access to power, land and high-capacity infrastructure, and former industrial sites could provide a strong foundation for this next generation of computing.”

For BlitzLab readers, the through-line is the power constraint on the AI buildout. NVIDIA’s scored profile is built on compute dominance; this collaboration shows the same company working the other end of the problem — where the power and the land for the next wave of AI factories will come from. It also fits a pattern: in July 2026, NVIDIA partnered with the Idaho National Laboratory, AWS, and several small modular reactor firms on the Prometheus project, which seeks to speed advanced nuclear deployment with AI. In Germany, the direction is the mirror image — not new nuclear power, but new computing on old energy ground.

What happens next is deliberately uncommitted: a screening study, then — only if the sites pass — site-by-site decisions that have not been made yet. Until then, the story is the assessment itself, and the signal it sends about what AI infrastructure developers now value most: not just chips, but connected, buildable ground.

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