On March 28, 2006, Gov. Andy Beshear sent out a press release that multi-national corporation Global Laser Enrichment (GLE) had announced plans to develop the Paducah Laser Enrichment Facility (PLEF), a $1.76 billion project. That press release included:
“GLE’s 665-acre Paducah site is strategically located adjacent to the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) former Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant. The PLEF is currently under license application review by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Once licensed, the facility is expected to re-enrich over 200,000 metric tons of high-assay depleted uranium under a 2016 contract with the U.S. Department of Energy – accelerating DOE’s site cleanup mission, reducing long-term federal costs, and providing a new fuel source for nuclear power generation.”
McCracken County is seeking state designation as Nuclear-Ready Community through the Kentucky Nuclear Energy Development Authority (KNEDA) as part of the process to gain approval for this project. The designation is intended to demonstrate a community’s preparedness and support for nuclear energy-related development within the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Details of this process are publicly available at this link: https://caer.uky.edu/sites/default/files/2025-10/nuclear-ready-community.pdf
McCracken County and the City of Paducah are holding critical meetings open to the public on June 11th and June 12th as part of the formal process for McCracken County to obtain this state designation through Kentucky Nuclear Energy Development Authority (KNEDA).
Meeting Details:
Session 1 Thursday, June 11, 2026 5:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m. Paducah-McCracken Co. Convention and Expo Center
Session 2 Friday, June 12, 2026 8:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. Paducah-McCracken Co. Convention and Expo Center
Originally, a nuclear scientist, Dr. Patrick White, was scheduled to speak and respond to questions. However, Dr. White cannot attend due to unforeseen circumstances.
Kara Colton, with the Energy Communities Alliance, https://www.energyca.org/ will be the featured speaker to provide information and discussion on topics related to nuclear energy.
A local grassroots citizens group called Protect McCracken County has been organizing in response to this project because of citizen concerns about the approval process, lack of transparency, lack of citizen input and involvement, and ongoing health and safety concerns. Their website, https://www.protectmccrackencounty.com/, highlights multiple concerns about this new facility being located adjacent to “one of the most contaminated Superfund sites in the country”. From that website:
“The DOE left us a Superfund site with radioactive technetium-99 in the groundwater with a half-life of 200,000 years. PFAS contamination still migrating and not under control. PCBs in the creek tributaries that flow to the Ohio River. The federal government is spending $17 billion to clean it up. They won't finish until 2065.
Now a foreign corporation wants to build a uranium enrichment facility right next door — on land that was public wildlife property until last year — and the same contaminated federal site is being marketed to private developers for a data center and a nuclear reactor.”
The group also stresses: “We are not against economic development. We are against decisions made in secret, on our behalf, without the independent environmental and economic review our community deserves.”
The group highlights a number of concerns about the process to-date including the non-disclosure agreement signed by Judge Clymer with the GLE corporation when the deal was signed. According to reporting by WKMS:
“That $98.9 million in incentives funds – a combination of tax and other economic incentives – will only be fully awarded should GLE reach its agreed investment and job creation thresholds. Of those, $24 million will come through a 15-year agreement preliminarily approved by the Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority Thursday. Another $3 million in tax incentives will come through the Kentucky Enterprise Initiative Act (KEIA), also approved by KEDFA.
That leaves $71.9 million in incentives to be accounted for.
Clymer told WKMS that he was unable to confirm how much the local government was contributing or the funding mechanism they hoped to use, saying he was under a nondisclosure agreement.”
The Protect McCracken County group is asking concerned citizens to attend either or both of these two meetings scheduled this week. According to spokesperson Erica Moore, “numbers matter”. Citizens attending can sign up to make public comments, which will be limited to three minutes. According to Erica Moore, areas of concern include:
1. The cleanup timeline for the current Superfund site and ongoing contamination effects in interaction with this new site’s effects.
2. The lack of an independent, cumulative environmental and economic impact assessment, as opposed to the current status in which the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission), EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), and DOE (Department of Energy) are each reviewing separate pieces of this situation in isolation.
3. The non-disclosure agreement signed by Judge Executive Clymer. “A community cannot give informed consent to a Nuclear-Ready designation when the financial terms driving it are hidden from them."
4. Broken promises by similar corporations in other communities, such as Switch in Michigan which promised 1,000 jobs and created only 26.
5. The need for an independent health impact study in view of the groundwater contamination already in existence here and the high cancer rates in Kentucky and regionally.
Those that are interested in attending this meeting and expressing concerns can consult Your Guide to the June 11 & 12 Nuclear Energy Community Meetings . There is also a Mobilize event link co-sponsored with Four Rivers Indivisible where individuals can sign up to attend which will help the group grow their contact list and will help guage possible attendance. that link is: https://mobilize.us/s/lWEyoX
In addition to their website, you can find Protect McCracken County on Facebook here:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1364249545551334
This public Facebook discussion group currently has 65 members as of this date.
There is a petition citizens can sign at the bottom of the home page of the group’s website, Protect McCracken County. For those seeking more information the email contact is protectmccrackencounty@gmail.com.