New Uranuim Enrichment Plant

A local US newspaper, the Columbus Dispatch, reported the announcement that a $50 million test enrichment plant will be built in Piketon instead of in Paducah, Kentucky with a glee that supporters of CADU will find astonishing. Describing the enthusiastic response to the `good news', the paper focuses on how great this new plant will be for jobs and the local economy.

Nowhere in the article is any discussion of the problems that are caused in the communities around uranium-enrichment facilities. Environmental factors do not feature at all. There is no mention of the troubles that former workers have had in Paducah, (when they were exposed unknowingly to plutonium) or the battle they had to get compensation. There is no mention of the astronomical $134million it costs to clean up the Paducah plant ( CADU news 11 & 12). If the people of Piketon were aware of these problems, surely they would stop cheering and start campaigning for more ethical investment in their local economy.

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