They don't even want to know themselves when the exhumations are going to be done. In testimony in an earlier court case, Clara Harding said that for years her husband suspected he might be working in dangerous circumstances that left him covered with a dust he suspected was radioactive. He said he waded in it. But now, here in this historic town where the Ohio and Tennessee Rivers flow together, nobody is pooh-poohing anything. That is because the exhumations are merely the latest chapter of a saga that has left many wondering how widely radioactive waste from the plant has spread and whether they have been told the truth about it by the federal government.
Nothing seeps out of there, except radiation.
The lawsuits are helping other things to seep out. The Energy and Justice Departments have begun separate investigations, with Justice saying its investigation could lead it to join with the plaintiffs in the class-action suit. The government built the Paducah plant in 1952, at the height of the Cold War. Patriotic sentiment, not to mention the arrival of more than 2,000 high-paying government jobs, dictated that the plant was a good thing. The other plants are in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and Piketon, Ohio.