The news hit Paducah (pop. 32,430) like a double shot of bourbon. Said one excited Kentucky housewife: "It'll make the whole town go haywire." The news: the Atomic Energy Commission was going to build a $500 million plant to make uranium 235 on a 5,000-acre site 16 miles west of the city, and Paducah would soon be swarming with well-heeled construction workers, perhaps as many as 10,000 of them.
To do the enormous building job and install the complex production equipment, AEC picked F. H. McGraw & Co. of Hartford, Conn., gave it a contract for $350 million, biggest single Government...
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