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Tennessee Data Center Intel
Latest data center news, projects, power and policy across Tennessee — updated daily.
Recent Tennessee data center news
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DOE’s ARPA-E Announces Up to $30 Million to Advance Geothermal Projects in SUPERHOT Program
The U.S. Department of Energy’s ARPA-E has announced up to $30 million in funding for eight geothermal projects under its SUPERHOT program.
- Eight projects were selected to advance geothermal technologies that can tap superhot resources above 375C and 22 megapascals, with the goal of expanding baseload power access.
- ARPA-E said SUPERHOT builds on prior work in Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) and Advanced Geothermal Systems (AGS) and aims to more than triple the output of individual wells; the article also says the projects could help deliver 10–20 GW of baseload power at less than $30 per MWh by 2040.
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UCR joins $4.8 million aviation safety endeavor
University of California, Riverside announced that Distinguished Professor Kadangode “K.K.” Ramakrishnan will join a $4.8 million National Science Foundation-funded aviation safety research project called AERONET.
- The project will develop AI-enabled orchestration of 5G cellular, Wi-Fi, and satellite networks to improve low-delay, reliable communications for aircraft and airports.
- The team is led by Puneet Sharma of Hewlett Packard Enterprise Lab (HPE) and includes researchers from UC Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon University, and Northeastern University; Ramakrishnan is also joining a separate U.S. Department of Energy-funded project, SciNet, announced earlier this year.
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State’s nuclear plans face a congressional hurdle
The article reports that U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Congress must authorize a second permanent nuclear waste disposal site before the Trump administration can move ahead with proposed nuclear lifecycle innovation campuses.
- The Energy Department received applications from 26 states and selected Louisiana, Idaho, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah and West Virginia as finalists; West Virginia withdrew later due to local opposition.
- Louisiana’s plan would use offshore underground salt domes for waste storage and create a hub for uranium fuel rod recycling and next-generation reactor component manufacturing; Turner Industries separately announced in April plans to add 1,000 jobs at its New Iberia and Port Allen facilities.
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IBM Quantum Nighthawk Demonstrates New Levels of Speed and Quality, with Plans to Scale Beyond 1,000 Qubits in 2027
IBM has announced the Quantum Nighthawk r3 processor and a 2027 plan to connect two processors into a single 1,040-qubit system.
- Nighthawk r3 is designed to execute 10,000 quantum operations across 520 programmable qubits with 2,034 total physical qubits, while keeping the square-lattice connectivity and adding 10 l-couplers for chip-to-chip interconnects.
- IBM also highlighted prior progress on Nighthawk r2, including up to 100,000 samples per second, partner workloads from E.ON, Algorithmiq, and Q-CTRL, and modular milestones such as 99.3% quantum state transfer fidelity and a first two-module cryogenic system integration; it also noted a new IBM Quantum Platform co-design effort with Oak Ridge National Laboratory and AMD for quantum error correction.
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The Midterm Elections Opened a Bipartisan Path on Nuclear Waste
The article is a commentary arguing for a bipartisan U.S. nuclear fuel recycling and takeback policy, rather than reporting a new corporate deal or government announcement.
- The author argues Congress should support a Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campus approach with durable funding, clear benchmarks, and oversight, while also advancing a bipartisan waste-management alternative to the current stalemate over Yucca Mountain.
- It cites lawmakers Mike Levin and Susie Lee, notes state interest in hosting parts of a broader nuclear fuel cycle, and says Russia held about 43% of global uranium-enrichment capacity in 2025; the piece also identifies Curio and Synergos Fund in the author bio.
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IBM, Quantinuum and Intel signal a new phase in the quantum computing race
IBM, AMD, and the DOE-funded Quantum Science Center at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have announced a new research platform pairing IBM’s 120-qubit Nighthawk quantum computer with Oak Ridge’s Umbra classical HPC cluster to study quantum error correction.
- The platform places Oak Ridge’s Umbra next to IBM’s Nighthawk at IBM’s Poughkeepsie computing center and links them by Ethernet; Umbra uses AMD Instinct GPUs and EPYC CPUs.
- IBM says the machine has 120 programmable qubits out of 458 physical qubits total, and it is described as a research platform rather than a commercial product.
Quantinuum has also announced a roadmap for its Nexus development platform, targeting fault tolerance becoming invisible by 2029.
- Nexus launched in 2024, now supports more than 200 organizations, and is designed to work with Quantinuum’s Apollo fault-tolerant quantum computer planned for 2029 as well as its current Helios system.
- Intel separately announced it would buy quantum computing software company Classiq; the deal was reported at $1.9 billion to $2.3 billion, which would make it the largest quantum-related acquisition to date.
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Oak Ridge National Lab, IBM, and AMD Launch New Co-Design Platform for Quantum Error Correction
IBM, the Quantum Science Center at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and AMD have announced a new co-design platform for quantum error correction that integrates quantum and high-performance computing.
- The first deployment co-locates IBM quantum computers — including the 120-qubit IBM Quantum Nighthawk — with ORNL’s Umbra HPC system, powered by AMD Instinct MI355X GPUs and 5th Gen AMD EPYC CPUs.
- The platform will be used to test error correction, decoding optimization, and software orchestration; it ties into the DOE’s Quantum Genesis Mission and its Q Competition target of 100 logical qubits and 100,000 hard operations by late 2028.
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A Syzygy in Nuclear Energy
Mark Todd Peters, president of the American Nuclear Society, argues that nuclear science and technology are in a new renaissance and urges policy and industry to prepare for scaling.
- He says five reactor models have recently achieved initial criticality, while advanced reactors are under construction in Wyoming, Idaho, and Tennessee, with another project due to begin in Texas.
- He adds that at least five companies have each raised more than $1 billion in start-up funding, while New York and Tennessee are funding workforce programs and the U.S. Department of Energy is strengthening the supply chain and exports.
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AI Data Centers Are Fueling a Nuclear Comeback
The article analyzes a broader nuclear energy revival driven by AI data center demand and rising electricity needs, while citing multiple recent deals and policy actions rather than announcing a single new project itself.
- IIR forecasts about $20 billion in new nuclear spending in 2026, rising to nearly $50 billion by 2029; it expects $68.3 billion in new plant spending and about $30 billion for expansion, maintenance, or revamps between late 2026 and 2029.
- The article cites several concrete actions: the US Department of Energy offered Constellation Energy a loan of up to $5 billion for uprates and modernization at eight plants in Illinois, Maryland, and Pennsylvania; Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are each tied to specific nuclear projects or restarts; Type One Energy plans a fusion plant start in 2027 at TVA’s Bull Run Energy Complex in Clinton, Tennessee.
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Industrial facilities gained momentum in Q3: Colliers, JLL
Colliers and JLL reported that North American big-box industrial markets tightened in 2026, with leasing and occupancy improving as demand outpaced new supply.
- Colliers said big-box leasing reached 170.6 million square feet in the first half of 2026, while net absorption of 88 million square feet nearly doubled the 45 million square feet of new supply; Q3 vacancy fell to 7.2%.
- JLL said data center development is driving demand from equipment suppliers, construction vendors, and power infrastructure companies, with activity concentrated in Dallas-Fort Worth and metro Washington, D.C.; average big-box rents reached $8.87 per square foot in H1 2026 and national asking rents rose to $10.55 per square foot.