Why Build Uranium Enrichment in Paducah?

Scott Nolan says the uranium enrichment plant is in Paducah because that community most recently did the work in the US, already welcomes it, and has the talent.

The search for the site lasted over a year, ran through over ten states, and covered over a thousand plots of land. Paducah, in Western Kentucky, is where the last US enrichment facility stood: a gaseous diffusion plant on a DOE site that shut down in 2013. A fresh facility is going up on the same site, and the technique will be unveiled in the first half of next year.

The plant is meant to last decades, so community support and the local talent base came above anything else. Paducah was already familiar with enrichment, comfortable with it, and understood it as a positive thing for the community. The DOE site also made some shared services available.