We're Told to Trust the Studies. Here's Why We Can't.

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. Fresh contamination, on land people assumed was fine. It was serious enough that in July 2025, the site had to expand the boundary of a waste management unit, SWMU 64, to take it in.

Think about what that means. The earlier studies either missed this contamination or never looked at that spot at all. Either way, the "existing studies" we're told to trust did not catch it. The soil did.

Then there's the NRC's draft environmental report on Global Laser Enrichment's land. This is the document meant to prove the project is safe. Read it, and you find something stunning. For 34 separate environmental and safety issues, NRC staff wrote that they "did not conduct additional site-specific evaluations."

So what did they do instead? They checked that a handful of generic numbers, called plant parameter envelopes and site parameter envelopes, were technically "met." That's it. No site-specific modeling. No local soil or water data. Just a checkbox confirming our community fits inside a generic worst-case scenario. And that scenario was built for nuclear reactors, a completely different technology.

That's not a study. That's a checkbox exercise.

This is why we keep asking for one thing. Not a rerun of the same paperwork. One truly independent study that looks at all of the proposed projects together, in and around the DOE Superfund site, and asks a simple question. How will all of this development affect the cleanup that is still going on right now?

The cleanup runs until 2065. New contamination is still turning up. And the reports we're told to trust keep missing it.

Trust is earned. Show us the work. A real, independent, cumulative study is the only thing that earns it.

Don't Trust Us. Do the Research Yourself.

We are not asking you to take our word for any of this. We are asking you to read the documents. Everything above comes from the government's own paperwork, not ours. Here is where to start.

The uranium finding east of Little Bayou Creek

Little Bayou Creek Solid Waste Management Unit (SWMU) Assessment Report for SWMU 64, DOE/LX/07-2530&D1. U.S. Department of Energy, Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office, transmitted May 8, 2026. This is the report that expands the SWMU 64 boundary. It states the July 2025 sample (ID S0013) came back at 64 pCi/g for uranium-238 and 7.2 pCi/g for uranium-234, both above the site's own background levels.

The underlying survey: Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORISE), Independent Verification Survey Report for Parcel 1, Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, July 2025. This is the study that found the contamination. https://5d7a201f-7c81-452b-ae23-49e93cf6689d.usrfiles.com/ugd/5d7a20_41ceaa5a381545869cba7712ca134ba4.pdf

What the annual monitoring actually reports

Annual Document of Polychlorinated Biphenyls at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, January 1 to December 31, 2025, FRNP-RPT-0414. Four Rivers Nuclear Partnership for the U.S. Department of Energy, issued June 2026. Read the reports we are told to trust and see what they cover, and what they do not. https://5d7a201f-7c81-452b-ae23-49e93cf6689d.usrfiles.com/ugd/5d7a20_5e4c3a2478c4407091c11e9691b18aef.pdf

The NRC's "checkbox" review

NRC Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the Global Laser Enrichment license application, Docket No. 70-7033. Look for the 34 issues where staff "did not conduct additional site-specific evaluations" and instead relied on the generic plant and site parameter envelopes (check pages 1-7, 3-1 through 3-3, and Appendix C). https://5d7a201f-7c81-452b-ae23-49e93cf6689d.usrfiles.com/ugd/5d7a20_be5cfc7f34764448af3ec301493dc19e.pdf

Where to find these and more

The DOE Portsmouth/Paducah public documents portal: https://pubdocs.pad.pppo.gov. The SWMU 64 report and the PCB annual document are also posted on our site and attached to this post.

Read them for yourself. Then ask the same question we are asking. Where is the study that looks at all of this together?