The Paducah Area Community Reuse Organization or PACRO is working with union and economic development officials to garner support for soon to be unemployed workers at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant. USEC announced last week it won't continue it's enriching process at the Department of Energy owned site.
Purchase Area Development District Special Projects Coordinator Mary-Anne Medlock said workers will soon receive a survey to help understand the plant's demographics to aid in an seeking an emergency grant from the Department of Labor.
“When you have a shutdown of 1,100 individuals, that causes a stress on our funding, so the national emergency grant will allow us to temporarily expand services," said Medlock. "There are twenty questions that will help us understand the plans the workers have after the cease of operations and what they would like to do so that way we can design services to help them do this.”
The USEC has operated the plant since 1993 and will stop enriching uranium at the end of the month. PACRO and USEC officials plan to meet June 19th to discuss further support operations.