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Wright Delivers Remarks at the Portsmouth Site Groundbreaking in Pike County, Ohio, Mar. 20, 2026

March 20, 2026 · U.S. Department of Energy · 0:05:38

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

Energy Secretary Chris Wright delivered remarks at the groundbreaking ceremony at the Portsmouth Site in Pike County, Ohio, in the Department of Energy’s upload of the March 20, 2026 event. Wright thanked the community — “thank you for bringing America back” — and described the project as a gigantic factory and ecosystem that will take electricity and turn it into intelligence, innovation, and medical advances, with intelligence he called critical to national defense and quality of life.

Wright called the project “bigger than any facility ever built in world history” and “the largest bet on a construction facility ever made in human history,” as he stated it, and thanked the project’s partners, naming the government of Japan and SoftBank, alongside Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who had spoken before him. He said the investment would draw other industries to locate near the energy production and intelligence generation, creating jobs and raising wages while the energy produced lowers costs.

Why it matters

Portsmouth is Wright’s build-big-things case at maximum scale: a former federal energy site in Pike County recast as the home of the largest construction bet he says has ever been made — the administration’s argument that energy abundance plus intelligence infrastructure is where industrial revival happens.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard watch: Secretary Wright’s characterization of the Portsmouth project on March 20, 2026 — the largest construction-facility bet in human history, as he stated it — and the job and wage effects he projected for the region. Flagged for the scoreboard editor; no entry is published from this page.

Sources: U.S. Department of Energy, “Secretary Wright Delivers Remarks at Portsmouth Site in Pike County, Ohio - March 20, 2026” (official upload, embedded above; remarks as delivered by Secretary Wright).