One hundred billion dollars is headed to the old uranium plant in the form of a giant AI data center. Officials are calling it one of the largest investments in Kentucky history, and they may be right. But underneath that number sits the question nobody at the podium is answering, and it is the only one that matters for the people who live here: how much of that money actually stays in McCracken County? The honest answer is: not much. What a hundred billion dollars really buy

Judge Craig Clymer has said he would oppose anything coming into our county that he believes is not safe, no matter the economic benefit. I believe he means it. I have no reason to doubt his sincerity. But sincerity is not the same as certainty. And on the biggest industrial decision in our county's history, we are being asked to trade one for the other. Here is what keeps catching my attention. Judge Clymer has been steady in his willingness to talk about the details that fa

Every time we ask hard questions about the projects going up around the Paducah Superfund site, we hear the same answer. Trust the officials. Trust the environmental studies already on file. There's an Annual Site Environmental Report, after all. We'd love to trust it. The problem is the record keeps proving us right. Last year, the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education tested soil east of Little Bayou Creek. They found elevated levels of uranium-238 and uranium-234.

Judge Craig Clymer recently told the community he posted the project details on the McCracken County website "to give factual information." We took him at his word and read every page. Then we asked a simple question that changes how you should read all of it. Who actually wrote those "facts"? The answer is right there on the page. Every word of it comes from something called the "Paducah American Energy Hub." So who is that? There is no "Energy Hub" The Paducah American Ener

For over sixty years, Paducah proudly bore the title of the “Atomic City"—a vital industrial powerhouse fueling America's Cold War defense and domestic nuclear grid. But when the Gaseous Diffusion Plant went permanently dark in 2013, that proud legacy unraveled into a daunting inheritance: a massive economic void and an environmental ticking time bomb of over 40,000 rusting steel storage cylinders. Today, that historical moniker is being weaponized once again. State officials

Judge Clymer's post calls the land swap a win for wildlife. Sixty percent more acreage, he says. Trade 665 acres in McCracken County for 1,068 acres in Fulton County, and conservation comes out ahead. That math works on a spreadsheet. It doesn't work in the woods. This isn't about one bat that isn't federally listed yet Judge Clymer's post focuses on the tricolored bat, correctly pointing out that it hasn't been federally listed as endangered. But that's not the only species

Last summer, the federal government agreed that people in Paducah were harmed by radiation. This year, that same government told some of those same people they live too far away to have a say about a new nuclear plant going up in their backyard. Both of those things cannot be true. And yet here we are. Let me tell you about Mark Donham. Mark has spent more than forty years paying attention to what happens at the old Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant. He served eight years on th

The pitch is a tidy one, and by now it's familiar: depleted uranium tails go into GLE's new facility, cleaner fuel comes out, and the Paducah site gets a little closer to cleaned up. But "tails in, fuel out" skips over a lot of what happens in between, and the in-between is worth a closer look. What are the "tails," really? When Paducah operated as an enrichment plant, it split uranium into two streams. One stream had more of the useful isotope, U-235, and became fuel. The ot

Before we get to Judge Clymer's post from last week, there's something the community needs to see first. Dr. Patrick White, the Group Lead for Fusion, Safety and Regulation at the Clean Air Task Force, was invited to lead the county's official Community Education meeting, required for McCracken County to become a designated Nuclear-Ready Community. In an email obtained through an open records request, White pulled out of that meeting himself. He didn't want to put his reputat

Politicians love a good jobs story. And when it comes to the proposed uranium enrichment facilities near the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant site, "thousands of high-paying jobs" has become the headline. It deserves a closer look. GLE has stated its facility will create 240 permanent jobs. General Matter cites roughly 140. Combined, that's approximately 380 permanent positions — and those numbers are written into contracts. But contracts aren't guarantees. Other communities h

What McCracken County wasn't told about the GLE deal. When Governor Andy Beshear stood before the cameras in March 2026, the headline was hard to argue with. Global Laser Enrichment (GLE) was bringing a $1.76 billion project to Paducah. The single largest private investment in Western Kentucky history. Two hundred and forty jobs. A nuclear future for a city that once powered America's Cold War. What didn't make the press release was the ledger on the other side of that deal.

Picture this. Your son or daughter gets hired for a job at GLE's Laser Enrichment Facility. Before their first day, the safety report is supposed to tell them how much radiation they'd actually be exposed to, working in that specific location, doing that specific job, at this specific site. Instead, the number they're handed comes from a safety study written for a different enrichment plant somewhere else, a study that's still just a draft and hasn't even been finished yet. I

At Thursday's meeting, several officials characterized concerns raised by residents and Protect McCracken County as "misinformation." We take that seriously. Misinformation is a real problem, and if we have stated something inaccurate, we want to correct it. So we're asking directly: which of the following statements is false? The KRC filed a formal petition with the NRC on May 5, 2026, challenging GLE's license application — including the claim that the NRC's Draft Environme

The Speaker Has Changed. The Questions Haven't. When McCracken County officials originally announced the June 11 and 12 Nuclear Energy Community Meetings, they listed Dr. Patrick White as the featured presenter. Dr. White is an advanced nuclear and technology expert with credentials in nuclear energy safety, regulation, waste management, and nonproliferation — exactly the kind of expertise KNEDA's Nuclear-Ready Community designation process requires. Dr. White is no longer pr

I have been called a liar. A luddite. A sensationalist. I have been threatened. Not for doing anything wrong. For asking questions. That's worth sitting with for a moment. All I have asked is this: before major industrial development moves forward on land adjacent to an active Superfund site, can someone please tell us what the cumulative environmental impact will be on the contamination mitigation work already underway at the DOE site? That's it. That's the whole ask. The Pa

Wildlife, Waterways, and 67 Years of Conservation The debate over the land proposed for the Paducah Laser Enrichment Facility is about far more than acreage. It is about protecting a landscape that has been managed for wildlife conservation for nearly seven decades and that supports streams, wetlands, forests, and habitat used by protected species. The map here shows the Paducah Site in relation to Big Bayou Creek, Little Bayou Creek, and the Ohio River. The site sits within

The Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant Superfund site has active groundwater contamination plumes — Technetium-99, PFAS, and trichloroethylene — that are still migrating and not under control. Construction on the adjacent GLE site could accelerate that migration, disturb contaminated soil, and interfere with the pump-and-treat systems that have been running continuously since the mid-1990s to keep that contamination from reaching the Ohio River. No agency — not the NRC, EPA, DOE

Something has shifted. Across the country, communities that once rolled out the welcome mat for data center developers are now fighting back — and winning. Planning commissions are denying permits. State legislatures are trying to claw back tax incentives. And the number of communities saying no is accelerating faster than anyone predicted. McCracken County is not late to this fight. We are right on time. Pocatello Said No. So Can We. On May 18, 2026 — six days before our Pla

www.ProtectMcCrackenCounty.com Why These Meetings Matter Download a copy of the Guide here. These are not just information sessions. According to the official press release from McCracken County and the City of Paducah, these meetings are being held as part of the formal process for McCracken County to obtain state designation as a Nuclear-Ready Community through the Kentucky Nuclear Energy Development Authority (KNEDA). That designation has real consequences for what gets bu

McCracken County is not the first place to be told that industrial development is the answer to its economic prayers. It will not be the last. But right now, we have something that communities in Virginia, Michigan, and Georgia did not have when they signed on the dotted line: the benefit of their experience. And their experience is not good. The Promises Come First The script is always the same. A company arrives, sometimes through an LLC so you cannot easily identify who yo