Plans for a £16.5 billion datacentre campus on the site of the former Chapelcross nuclear power station have been lodged with Dumfries and Galloway Council.
Annan-based CX Tech Limited has applied for planning permission in principle for the ‘CX Technology Campus’, which would bring eight datacentres and a dedicated training centre to the brownfield site.
The application covers up to 162,000 square metres of datacentre floorspace. Each of the eight buildings would have a capacity of about 120MW, giving the campus roughly 1GW in total, and would stand up to 40 metres high.
If approved, it would be among the largest datacentre developments proposed in the UK. The developer stresses that the application sets a planning framework only, with later phases subject to further design, commercial, planning and investment decisions.
Chapelcross was Scotland’s first commercial nuclear power station. It opened in 1959 and stopped generating in 2004, and the site is now being decommissioned.
CX Tech says the campus is being designed to be net zero in operation, in line with the UK Green Building Council framework.
The site sits next to an existing 132kV grid supply point. The developer has identified about 1GW of consented or planned renewable generation within 5km of Chapelcross, and about 2GW within 20km.
Backup generation would be ‘fossil-free’ and would run only during routine testing and exceptional interruptions to supply, according to the application. Embodied carbon from construction would be managed through a construction environmental management plan.
Graeme Anderson, CEO of CX Tech Limited, said: “This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for Dumfries and Galloway and for Scotland. Chapelcross has the potential to bring together our renewable energy strengths, digital infrastructure and high-value jobs in a way that few other sites can. We have an opportunity to seize that potential now, creating a new economic future for a site that has played an important role in Scotland’s energy story for generations.”
Water consumption has become one of the most contested aspects of large datacentre proposals. CX Tech’s design uses closed-loop, non-evaporative air cooling, which it says avoids the continuous water demand of some large-scale cooling systems.
The company expects each datacentre to use as much water a year as four houses, or 32 households across the whole campus. It also plans to make maximum use of free air cooling, taking advantage of the local climate.
An environmental impact assessment submitted with the application covers transport, noise, air quality, biodiversity, landscape, heritage, water, ground conditions, climate and human health. It finds that noise at the nearest properties would stay less than 10dB above existing background levels, and that the road network can absorb the traffic generated.
CX Tech, formerly CX Power, was appointed strategic development partner for the site by NDA Properties Limited, the wholly owned subsidiary of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. The company describes itself as a ‘Scottish business with experience of developing datacentres and major infrastructure projects globally’.
However, significant local resistance to the plans has emerged. A ‘say no to Chapelcross AI data centre’ petition has attracted nearly 3,000 signatures, saying: “This massive development would be among the largest in Britain, with the datacentre alone taking up the equivalent of ~22 football pitches. Now is the time to stand up against the moneyed interests who are looking to put more money into their own pockets at our expense and at the expense of generations to come.”