Energy

Michigan township residents confront officials over a $1.2bn AI data center tied to Los Alamos nuclear stockpile modelling mixed

• At a 10 September town hall in Ypsilanti Township, Michigan, residents confronted officials over a proposed 220,000-square-foot, $1.2 billion hyperscale data centre being developed by the University of Michigan with Los Alamos National Laboratory. 404 Media compares its profile to OpenAI's 1.4-gigawatt Barn project in nearby Saline Township.
• Los Alamos acknowledged the facility would support computational research related to nuclear modernisation — modelling and simulation to assess the safety and reliability of the US nuclear stockpile — while denying that weapons production, testing or plutonium storage would take place on site.
• Township supervisor Brenda Stumbo said "it started with a lie" and reported residents selling homes; township attorney Douglas Winters described the site as a "high-value target." A data centre worker at the meeting said the facility ranks "at the very top" against average US sites and that such facilities "don't belong in residential areas next to schools."
• This is the AI buildout's siting politics arriving at a specific address, with a national-security workload attached. No power draw, water use or construction timeline figures were published, and the project's approval status is not stated.