A newly formed group, called Protect McCracken County, seeks to bring together residents of Paducah and the surrounding area who oppose the pair of nuclear developments already underway in far western Kentucky.
Many people have voiced consternation over the pair of privately developed uranium enrichment facilities – one at the U.S. Department of Energy’s former Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant site and the other immediately adjacent to it on former Kentucky Fish and Wildlife Resources land – during public forums in recent months.
Erica Moore started Protect McCracken County to unite and amplify those community voices and create a centralized source of information for people with concerns.
“This is going to be a long fight to make sure that we can stop this, and I needed us all to get on the same page and speak with a collective voice because, obviously, we're going to be a lot stronger together,” Moore said.
Protect McCracken County’s first rallying cry is a petition launched by Moore on Memorial Day. It calls for a moratorium on development activities on both the land leased by Global Laser Enrichment for a first-of-its-kind laser uranium enrichment facility and the DOE site grounds where General Matter hopes to build their own uranium enrichment site until “an independent, cumulative environmental study” has been completed for both projects.
Moore said, as of 5 p.m. Wednesday, the signature had gained more than 250 signatures. Her goal, she said, is 5,000.
GLE has completed a draft Environmental Impact Statement, as required by federal law, but it only addresses potential consequences of its own project – not General Matter’s.
Many of the group’s supporters – and other concerned area residents – attended a special called meeting of the McCracken County Planning Commission on Wednesday to give public comment, urging its members to follow through on the moratorium requested in the petition.
During her remarks at the meeting, Moore also called for GLE and General Matter to foot the bill for the environmental study – suggesting they split the cost with any company also hoping to develop an artificial intelligence data center at either site – and asked the commission to publicly support the disclosure of details of the incentives package granted to GLE by McCracken County, which Judge-Executive Craig Clymer told WKMS were protected by a nondisclosure agreement earlier this year.
The Wrays – Becky and Joey – live just across from the DOE site. Both called for more transparency on the developments.
“What I and people of our community want to know and deserve to know is we want the details to it,” said Joey. “We want to know what they are actually planning and how they're planning on doing it. That way we can make an informed decision about it – of whether we are actually opposed or not – because the information has not been put out there.”
“We're dealing with this every day, and it's a shame that you're not doing what your constituents want you to do, and I think that's all we're asking [for] is openness and honesty,” Becky told the planning commission.
Others raised safety, quality of life and environmental concerns surrounding the developments, with many questioning how the deal to give GLE what was formerly public land adjacent to the DOE site came to be. This meeting comes just weeks after the Kentucky Resources Council and a Paducah resident filed petitions for a federal hearing on GLE’s license request with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, citing the company’s reliance on “generic” – not site-specific – data in pre-licensing regulatory documents.
Joshua Massey told the commission that the developments could be putting Kentuckians at risk.
“According to the National Academy of Science, there is no safe dose of ionizing radiation exposure, so I believe that there should be no legal safe limit of ionizing radiation exposure,” Massey said. “I don't think anybody should be exposed to it. And here we are in the state of Kentucky, where we have the highest incidence rate of every form of cancer and the highest cancer mortality rate of all 50 states. So I ask: How many McCracken County residents must get cancer and die before we decide that bringing in industry that we know can cause cancer is just not worth the financial incentive?”
Local musician Marley Rounds took to the podium to say “too much is being decided for this community without this community” and questioned federal oversight of the projects.
“We can't look to federal agencies for protection the way we once could. The [Environmental Protection Agency], the NRC and the DOE have had their environmental oversight priorities fundamentally redirected toward promoting uranium enrichment and data center development, not scrutinizing it,” he said. “The agencies that exist to ask hard questions on our behalf are now, in many cases, the same agencies cheerleading these projects, which means this planning commission may be the last public body with the authority to demand answers before it's too late.”
Since Wednesday’s meeting of the McCracken County Planning Commission was a special called meeting, the group was bound by the established agenda. Many attendees – including former medical journalist Johnette Worak – expressed hope that they would consider a moratorium in an upcoming meeting.
“You, as the county [planning] commission, you're a public body and it's up to you to keep something like this from going forward if it's not going to be in the best interest of the people of Kentucky,” she said. “This is a wonderful place to live … I don't know if it will be in 20 years if an [artificial intelligence data] center comes here or if what is planned for the [the PGDP site] goes through.”
Nearly a dozen people spoke against the pair of nuclear developments. No one on the McCracken County Planning Commission commented on their statements.
