Huffington Magazine Issue 61 | Page 62

AP PHOTO/ED REINKE KENTUCKY’S KING Cross says. That meant promising job security. There were good reasons to be concerned about the Paducah plant’s survival. With the Cold War arms race giving way to the Three Mile Island disaster in 1979 and new hope for arms treaties between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, the Atomic City began to lose its luster. In 1980, the Paducah plant employed about 1,940 workers in production activities. Within five years, more than 650 of them were gone. In 1987, HUFFINGTON 08.11.13 a similar uranium enrichment facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn., was shuttered, leaving Paducah and a third plant in Ohio as the only such operations left over from the Manhattan Project. The technology was fast becoming obsolete. Among the workers, rumors of the plant closing became an everpresent part of the job. If the Paducah plant were to close, it would have a devastating effect on the local economy. Production only accounts for a fraction of the plant’s economic significance: Hundreds of guards, drivers and other contract workers are employed at the plant, McConnell (left) and former Senator Jim Bunning lean across McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, to exchange words at the annual Fancy Farm picnic on Aug. 7, 2004. Politicians from across the state flock to the picnic each year to meet voters and make speeches.