Meta wants to build one of the largest data centers in the world in rural Louisiana. 

The facility, known as Hyperion, is being built to train and operate the artificial intelligence systems behind Meta’s products. What began as a $10 billion proposal has since ballooned into a more than $50 billion development spanning nearly 10 million square feet and roughly 3,650 acres. At full scale, Hyperion is expected to require 5 gigawatts of computing capacity, making it the largest data center in Meta’s global fleet and one of the largest ever built. According to Meta, the project is expected to employ around 7,500 workers during peak construction and support 1,000 permanent jobs once operational.

For residents of Richland Parish, the arrival of Meta has brought both desperately needed jobs and profound uncertainty about what the project will mean for the community. The enormous facility is being constructed on former farmland and will require an equally immense network of infrastructure to support it. In nearby Rayville, many residents view Meta as an economic lifeline after decades of limited employment opportunities, with local families securing jobs that pay far more than the parish’s median income. But the influx of highly paid, out-of-town workers has also driven up rent and the cost of living as landlords and businesses increasingly orient themselves toward Meta employees. Landlords routinely raise the rent of low-income housing in order to price out local tenants in favor of contractors, forcing residents to move out of the area to afford housing.

Bringing Meta to Richland Parish

Richland Parish is a rural stretch of northeast Louisiana dominated by flat, fertile land rich with cotton, soybeans, corn, and rice. The parish’s economy has historically revolved around large-scale, row-crop farming, but declining farm incomes and population loss has strained the region in recent generations. Richland’s employment rate sits at 49.9%, 9.4% below the already dismal state average, with a median income of $53,544. A total of 36% of the 20,000 person population is Black. Rayville, the parish seat, is 80% Black. For decades, Richland has been far removed from the state’s economic centers of New Orleans and Baton Rouge, receiving little of the investment that has flowed into Louisiana’s larger cities.

That changed in January 2024, when Entergy Louisiana, the state’s monopoly power company, began a year-long courting ritual to bring Meta’s largest data center to the impoverished parish. Following months of backdoor deals and nondisclosure agreements, Meta announced plans to build a $10 billion, 4-million-square-foot data center on a 2,250-acre flood plain. In July 2026, Meta expanded the project, committing more than $50 billion and nearly 10 million square feet to what may become the largest data center in the company’s fleet and home to its massive Hyperion AI training cluster.

Both Meta and Entergy have been quick to dismiss community concerns, with state officials claiming that “whatever comes out of it will be better than the mostly fallow farmland that was there.” Meta likewise touts a laundry list of benefits it promises to bring to the area, most notably permanent jobs and increased tax revenue. The company now claims that the expanded Hyperion AI center will create more than 1,000 permanent jobs, alongside thousands of temporary construction jobs.

But Meta has refused to provide the evidence behind those projections. On August 12, the Louisiana Public Service Commission voted 3–1 to overturn the recommendation of an administrative law judge that Meta turn over information substantiating its projected job creation, economic impact, and electricity demand, effectively shielding the company’s claims from public scrutiny.

Meta’s empty promises of economic growth

The public’s skepticism is warranted. Data centers routinely generate thousands of temporary construction jobs while creating only a fraction as many permanent positions once construction ends. Meta’s projects in Texas and Oklahoma, for example, are expected to leave only around 100 operational jobs each after thousands of construction workers leave. QTS similarly estimates that a data center campus in York County, North Carolina will produce roughly 1,000 construction jobs but only about 100 permanent onsite positions. Even Hyperion’s original proposal called for roughly 5,000 construction workers but only 500 permanent operational employees. None of these figures guarantee that the permanent positions will go to Richland Parish residents. Meta has offered assurances about local hiring, but there is no binding commitment requiring the company to employ local workers.

Meta also claims the data center will bring tens of millions of dollars in tax revenue to Richland Parish, an argument it bolsters by pointing to the 2,000% increase in sales-tax totals since construction began – $50,000 of which has funded bonuses for some local schoolteachers. But that windfall is largely a product of the construction boom itself, not a sustainable source of revenue generated by the completed data center. The teacher bonuses are distributed through Richland Parish’s longstanding one-cent sales-tax program, which provides annual “13th checks” to eligible school employees. As those construction workers spend money in the parish, that pool has temporarily grown; once construction ends, so will much of the revenue feeding it. The result is a temporary infusion of money that can obscure the longer-term fiscal consequences of the project. When the construction boom ends, Richland Parish will be left with the costs of a massive industrial project, and fewer public resources to pay for them.

Cementing Louisiana’s dependence on fossil fuels amid environmental devastation

The environmental impact of the Meta data center could also be deadly for residents of Richland Parish and Louisiana as a whole. The Hyperion AI data center is expected to consume roughly half of the state’s electrical capacity – approximately seven times the energy consumed by the entire city of New Orleans – placing enormous new demands on Entergy’s already overburdened power grid. Louisiana residents know what a fragile electrical system can mean in a disaster. After Hurricane Katrina, Entergy’s restoration efforts took 42 days to complete across its service territory. In 2021, Hurricane Ida left nearly 950,000 customers without power after an Entergy tower fell into the Mississippi River, a disaster that required 15 days of restoration work just to bring more than 90% of affected customers back online.

Rather than address these vulnerabilities, Entergy’s proposed solution to Hyperion’s unprecedented energy demands is to build an entirely new fossil-fuel energy infrastructure around the data center. The company plans to construct ten natural-gas power plants, including seven new facilities capable of generating roughly 5.2 gigawatts of electricity, alongside new transmission lines and a massive 500-kilovolt substation. Meta, Entergy, and the Louisiana state government are working to present these projects as investments that will strengthen Louisiana’s electrical grid and improve reliability for ordinary customers.

Louisiana is being asked to construct an enormous new fossil-fuel-based energy system so that a single private corporation can consume an unprecedented share of its electricity. More generation may increase capacity, but it does not eliminate the physical vulnerabilities that have repeatedly left Louisiana residents without power after hurricanes. Instead, the state is doubling down on a centralized, fossil-fuel-dependent grid whose infrastructure will remain vulnerable to the same storms that have already decimated Louisiana’s communities.

Entergy’s catastrophic deal with Meta has arrived as Louisiana is already on the front lines of an environmental crisis. The state has lost more than 2,000 square miles of coastal land since 1932 and continues to lose more than 16 square miles each year. The state has experienced 31 billion-dollar weather and climate disasters since 2018, leaving communities to repeatedly rebuild from hurricanes, flooding, and extreme weather. Meanwhile, along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, the area known as “Cancer Alley” contains a dense concentration of petrochemical and chemical facilities, exposing surrounding communities to significant air pollution and toxic emissions which have resulted in a cancer rate fifty times higher than the national average.

People of Louisiana reject corporate profiteering

These environmental pressures are only compounded by an affordability crisis. In 2024, 49% of Louisiana households – nearly 900,000 – were either living in poverty or earning too little to afford basic necessities. A basic survival budget costs an estimated $30,708 a year for a single adult and $81,912 for a family of four, before accounting for savings or emergencies such as climate disaster. All the while, the state is being asked to absorb another enormous industrial project while nearly half of its households are already struggling financially and its communities confront environmental catastrophe.

Read more: A massive AI data center transforms rural Utah into a national flashpoint

Community opposition to the Hyperion project reflects a growing recognition that the promised benefits of corporate development cannot be separated from the costs that residents will be asked to bear. The fight is not simply over one data center, but over who gets to determine what Louisiana’s resources are used for and whose interests development is meant to serve. For generations, Louisiana communities have been told that jobs and investment require accepting pollution, environmental destruction, and the transformation of local resources into private profit.

Hyperion offers another version of the same bargain: enormous amounts of Louisiana’s land, electricity, water, and public infrastructure would be redirected toward the interests of one of the world’s largest technology companies. And the resistance to that bargain extends far beyond Richland Parish. Hundreds of Louisianans have mobilized around Public Service Commission meetings, traveling to the capital to demand that regulators prioritize the people who will bear the costs of Meta and Entergy’s expansion. Their concerns have repeatedly been dismissed or overridden by a majority of commissioners, even as the commission has approved billions of dollars in new generation and transmission infrastructure for the project. A 2024 investigation by the Louisiana Illuminator and Floodlight found that nearly 43% of campaign contributions to Louisiana utility commissioners over the previous decade came from utilities, energy-related businesses, and their attorneys and lobbyists, with Entergy Louisiana and its executives and family members contributing roughly $350,000.

The resistance emerging across Louisiana is more than a battle over a single data center. It is a decisive stand for the right of Louisianians to determine their own future, rather than surrender it to corporate interests. This is a battle for the future of working people everywhere, and the people have vowed to keep fighting. 

Kieran Spencer is a New Orleans-based historian and organizer.

On Saturday, September 5, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee visited Turmus Ayya village northeast of the West Bank central governorate of Ramallah and Al-Bireh.

The purpose of the visit was apparently to meet the residents of Turmus Ayya, the majority of whom hold US citizenship, and hear about the spike in Israeli settler violence against them in recent years that resulted in deaths and damages to their properties.

Read more: Family of Palestinian-American man killed by settlers in West Bank demands US take action

A symbolic and contradictory visit

While the unusual visit was seen by some as an important diplomatic engagement, commentators and analysts slammed the move as “largely symbolic,” doubting its ability to put an end to these ongoing crimes against Palestinian-Americans in the West Bank.

Critics also highlighted a contradiction in Huckabee’s rhetoric, pointing out that his condemnation of violent settler attacks as “criminal acts” and “terror” clashes sharply with his long-standing, unwavering support for the settlement movement.

“I hope you recognize that I’ve been very clear in public statements saying that when someone takes over another person’s home, if there are squatters that come in and put up their own flags and take possession of something that does not belong to them; if they burn a car, if they torch a mosque, if they go into someone’s home and vandalize it, paint graffiti on the walls, that’s a criminal act,” Huckabee stated at his town hall meeting with the residents of Turmus Ayyah in the presence of reporters. 

“But it extends beyond a criminal act. It’s an act of terror. I’ve been criticized a little bit for calling that terror, but terror is when a person is forced to change his or her behavior because of the behavior of someone else who is trying to use intimidation to make them afraid to live in their own homes, to make their children afraid to play in their own yards, to be able to walk their own streets,” he continued.

During the meeting, the US Ambassador admitted the Trump administration’s inability to stop settler attacks or even investigate them.

“There are things the American Embassy cannot do. We cannot investigate criminal activity, because we don’t have that authority in another country. We cannot adjudicate criminal activity in another country because we don’t have the authority to do that,” Huckabee noted. 

Huckabee was censured for downplaying the scale of settler violence by describing the perpetrators as “a very tiny minority,” “a tiny little group of marauders,” and “a few hundred people.” Critics suggest that this perspective diminishes the gravity of the situation, especially as reports indicate that over 4,500 settler attacks have been carried out in the West Bank since the beginning of 2026.

Moreover, the US diplomat drew heavy criticism for using the biblical terms “Judea and Samaria” to refer to the occupied West Bank, during his discussions with Palestinians in Turmus Ayya.

This in turn pushed Sky News correspondent Adam Parsons to challenge him on the use of these terms.

“You’ve called it Judea and Samaria, that’s not what the rest of the World calls it, it’s not what Palestinians call it, and you’ve said that there is a small number of settlers across the West Bank. People here say that your words are empowering violent settlers who live over there to intimidate and to commit acts of violence on a daily basis. Do you take personal responsibility?”  Parsons asked.

Huckabee answered, saying:

“I strongly disagree with your conclusion that I am endangering people. I am here today to listen to people who have their legitimate grievances. The reason I use the terms Judea and Samaria is because they’re ancient biblical terms of this land. 80% of the bible happened in the area of Judea and Samaria. The West Bank is a nebulous term to me.”

For many, Huckabee’s justification has not absolved him from the responsibility. It rather lays bare his pro-Israel stance, deeply anchored in his evangelical Christian faith and Christian-Zionist convictions.

It is worth noting that even during Huckabee’s visit to Turmus Ayya, two Israeli settlers drove directly past the home hosting the visiting delegation. While this provided a striking example of the routine intimidation the village faces, it was also widely interpreted as an act of direct defiance of the US delegation.

On September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center towers released a dust cloud containing pulverized cement, glass fiber, and asbestos, among other toxins – marking the health of thousands of community members and first responders. Twenty-five years later, New York City has announced it will finally release the full records on the day’s health impact.

In a statement released by the city administration, Manhattan Borough officials emphasized the dust and smoke to which first responders were exposed to contained over 2,500 contaminants and faced long-term health consequences, including respiratory illnesses and cancers.

“For 25 years, four different Mayoral administrations kept from the public, the US Congress, and the City Council documents showing what the City actually knew about the danger of the toxic chemicals in Lower Manhattan and Western Brooklyn after the World Trade Center collapse, even as City officials continued messaging to the public that the air was ‘safe and acceptable,’” the organization 9/11 Health Watch stated on September 8.

The risks posed by the contamination were known from the very beginning, given the date of the towers’ construction and the materials used at the time. From health professionals to left-wing activists, many emphasized the hazardous potential of the dust and insisted the effects could not be resolved in a matter of days. Despite these warnings, local health structures and administration assured people of air safety in affected areas as early as a week later – and did not change course even as their own analyses indicated elevated levels of toxic elements like lead.

City officials saw survivors as liabilities, documents show

Newly released documents expose that city officials were aware of the health risks posed by the toxic dust, yet they prioritized minimizing financial threats to the city budget. One of the related documents, the Harding memo, shows that by October 2001 the City feared it could face over 10,000 claims as a result of its health advice. 

Official reassurances to residents that it was safe to return to their homes too early contributed to thousands of people, including children, experiencing symptoms like rashes, heavy coughs, and nosebleeds, leaving them exposed to long-term health impacts.

The memo clearly indicates that city officials knew community members might realize official advisories led them to return to the impact area too soon – “causing toxic exposure or emotional harm” – and that rescue workers could complain they “were provided with faulty equipment or no equipment (i.e. respirators).”

Read more: The Trump Effect: pushing global health to the brink

Among the workers most exposed to the pollution were cleanup and recovery officers, along with members of the police and fire departments. Firefighters were particularly affected. Several reports over the years recorded the evolving health conditions they contracted as a result, including lung diseases, sarcoidosis, several types of cancer, and mental health issues. While some of these impacts could have been minimized by wearing appropriate gear, many of those arriving first relied on basic dust masks. “Respirators, which provide the actual protection needed, were seldom used on 9/11 and in the early days,” the Fire Department’s 2026 report notes.

“Firefighters described walking through dense clouds of dust and smoke in the hours immediately after the attack, in which ‘the air was thick as soup,’” a 2004 study pointed out. “FDYN responders inhaled this thick, polluted air,” the Fire Department also noted, “a situation made worse by the strenuous work that required increased respiratory effort and open-mouth breathing.”

Post-9/11 health landscape still evolving

With many conditions caused by the substances present in the dust taking decades to develop, the post-9/11 health landscape is still evolving – requiring ongoing monitoring and care. Despite leading to hundreds of additional deaths and chronic conditions, these cases have seen significantly less interest compared to the deaths caused directly by the attack on the WTC towers. 

The absence of a public healthcare system in the US also meant that 9/11 survivors could not automatically count on receiving the care they need. This is only one of the consequences of a system where health is treated as a commodity, as emphasized by socialist health professionals and activists. In 2006, one of these analysts, Vicente Navarro, pointed out that thousands of preventable deaths occurring each year in the US are directly linked to the lack of a strong public health system.

“The number depends on how one defines ‘preventable deaths,’” he wrote. “But even the conservative figure of 18,000 deaths per year is six times the number of people killed in the World Trade Center on 9/11. That event outraged people (as it should), but the deaths resulting from lack of health care seem to go unnoticed.”

People’s Health Dispatch is a fortnightly bulletin published by the People’s Health Movement and Peoples Dispatch. For more articles and to subscribe to People’s Health Dispatch, click here.

The European Space Agency (ESA) will carry out a mission on behalf of Greece to send astronaut Adrianos Golemis to the International Space Station (ISS). 39-year-old Dr Adrianos Golemis is a medical doctor and a flight surgeon for astronaut missions. He joined the ESA astronaut training program in March 2026 (KTG reported HERE). The flight […]

The post Dr Adrianos Golemis: First Greek astronaut at the International Space Station appeared first on Keep Talking Greece.

Holbrook Mohr and Mitch Weiss | The Atavist Magazine | July 2026 | 2,284 words (8 minutes)

This is an excerpt from issue no. 178, “Toxic Lies.”

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January 3, 2026

In the isolation ward of a hospital in Birmingham, Alabama, a nurse approaches Ron Fowler’s bed, cell phone extended in her hand.

“You have a call,” she says.

Fowler’s eyes flutter open. He tugs off his oxygen tube and, with trembling fingers, accepts the phone.

“Thanks,” he whispers, before turning his attention to us—the callers.

From his voice it’s clear that something is very wrong; he sounds nothing like his usual self. He’s due the next day to meet us for an interview in Paducah, Kentucky, where he and his friend Chuck Deuschle worked at a uranium-enrichment plant that helped fuel America’s nuclear arsenal. Years ago they blew the whistle on the government and its contractors for poisoning thousands of atomic workers. “Can’t make it,” Fowler chokes out. “Blood clots. Hospital. They may have to remove some toes—if those clots don’t reach my heart first. If they do…” He trails off, the terrible ending hanging in the air.

Fowler, soon to turn 77, is desperate to talk before it’s too late—to pull up the memories one more time and commit them to the historical record. He and Deuschle had both moved to Kentucky to work at the nuclear plant, only to discover a grim secret: The facility was exposing people to dangerously high levels of radiation and toxic chemicals, and had concealed the truth about it from employees and the surrounding community. This went on for decades. Faced with a choice—either walk away or stay and sound the alarm—Fowler and Deuschle returned to work, day after day.

More than thirty years later, lying in the hospital with cancer, Fowler is certain that the plant doomed him to a slow, painful death. At 83, Deuschle is also fighting a serious health issue: an unexplained autoimmune disease. They believe their fellow whistleblowers—Deuschle’s wife, Kay, and their friend Garland “Bud” Jenkins—succumbed to illnesses caused by the plant. Still, they’d do it all again. Someone had to reveal the callous disregard the government and the plant’s operators had shown their own people.

Fowler and Deuschle have never shared their story in full—the details of what it was like to live, breathe, and possibly die from their commitment to the truth. But they want people to know, particularly in light of recent news reports: In August 2025, more than a decade after the plant was shut down, a private firm announced that it planned to revive uranium-enrichment operations there. To Fowler and Deuschle, it seems wrong to begin a new chapter in Paducah’s nuclear story. Many former employees are still seeking compensation for their exposure to radiation. Will future generations of workers be any safer?

Fowler struggles for each breath.

“Time’s up,” the nurse says gently, reaching for the phone. “You need to rest.”

Fowler grips the device tighter.

“Call tomorrow when you meet with Chuck,” he implores. “I’m staying alive until then.” He pauses for a moment. “Just make sure Chuck’s with you. Promise me.”

We promise.

1.

One morning in late 1991, Ron Fowler stood in front of the bathroom mirror, parting his hair to the side and noting the first strands of gray at his temples. His beard was neatly trimmed, his black slacks and white dress shirt crisply pressed. He was ready. Today would be his first day at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, a uranium-enrichment facility about ten miles outside Paducah, Kentucky. This was more than just a job—it was the start of a new life.

Fowler was a health physicist, an expert in the science of radiation protection. For years he’d traveled the country to train workers at nuclear plants in safety protocols. The pay was great, but being on the road weeks at a time had worn him down. When he moved to Paducah in his early forties, Fowler had already lived in Illinois, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and Arkansas. Paducah promised stability: the perfect place to settle through retirement. His wife’s parents even moved from Illinois to be nearby.

After eating breakfast—a sausage patty and a scrambled egg—he kissed his wife, Sandi, goodbye and slipped out the door. He steered his green Oldsmobile Delta 88 through the country roads outside Paducah and let his mind drift back to his childhood in Florence, South Carolina. Life there had been simple. His father, who dropped out of school in the fourth grade, supported the family by working on the railroad. Florence was a place where men had jobs, women tended to the home and children, everyone went to church, and neighbors helped neighbors who fell on hard times. Paducah felt just as close-knit. Folks looked out for one another, and honest labor was rewarded.

Situated on the Ohio River where it meets the Tennessee, Paducah owes its origins to trade; it was founded in 1827 by William Clark of the Lewis and Clark expedition and named for a powerful Native American tribe. The area is naturally beautiful—the city is surrounded by rolling hills and sprawling plains dotted with ponds. For Fowler, a keen fisherman, it was paradise. Paducah had about 27,000 residents when he arrived. It was big enough to have all the right shops, yet small enough that restaurant owners knew whether regulars preferred barbecue or fried catfish, the local staples.

As Fowler drove, the plant appeared in the distance. It spread over some 3,500 acres—750 of them secured by fences and gates—and sat amid modest homes and farms. The community was proud of this place because of its long history supporting the military. Originally, it was a TNT munitions factory, built during World War II. Later, as Cold War tensions escalated, officials scouted locations for a uranium feed facility to supply weapons-production sites in Piketon, Ohio, and Oak Ridge, Tennessee, with the material required to make nuclear bombs. Paducah native Alben Barkley leveraged his position as Harry S. Truman’s vice president, campaigning aggressively to repurpose the munitions factory in his hometown. He recognized that the project likely would inject billions into the local economy and transform living standards for the region’s blue-collar workforce.

Construction of the nuclear plant began in 1951. By the following year, it was enriching uranium for atomic bombs and the Navy’s nuclear fleet. Rising from the countryside, the gleaming buildings looked like modern marvels, and the economic windfall lifted Paducah residents’ spirits. Meanwhile, employees at the plant—everyone from nuclear technicians to welders, cooks, and janitors—were united in patriotic pride. Their jobs paid well, and the workers believed that they were helping fend off communism. It was no wonder Life magazine printed a photo spread of the site.

As the Cold War thawed, the mission changed but the jobs remained. The plant began recycling materials—gold, among other things—extracted from dismantled atomic weapons while continuing to enrich uranium, now for nuclear power plants instead of bombs. Wages allowed families to buy homes and cars and afford vacations—the American middle-class dream. The plant operated like a self-contained town for its 1,700 employees: It had its own security force, fire department, library, post office, and health clinic. A shuttle service ferried employees around the plant’s grounds. Workers participated in golf leagues and fishing tournaments. The Uranium Enrichment News kept everyone informed about goings-on at the site.

Though the plant was owned by the Department of Energy, it was run by contractors. Union Carbide initially oversaw operations, followed by Martin Marietta, which later merged with Lockheed to become Lockheed Martin. Management changed, but to employees that just meant a different name on their paychecks. The people on the ground were like family—fiercely loyal to one another and to the plant they called the Atomic City.

Fowler smiled as he drove through a security gate into a sprawling lot. He parked by the administrative building and checked in with a secretary, who called someone to escort him to his department. From there he would lead health and safety training sessions. The federal government had known as early as 1944 that radiation was hazardous and had issued policies to limit worker exposure. It was Fowler’s job to help ensure that regulations were enforced, to protect both employees and the surrounding community from contamination.

He had barely settled in when a coworker poked his head in.

“Want to see the place?”

The complex was huge—more than five hundred buildings connected by nearly twenty miles of access roads. Fowler was impressed until, as he rounded a corner on his tour, a yellow triangular sign with the radiation symbol caught his eye. There was no step-off pad in sight. In a nuclear facility, a step-off pad is a buffer zone between a hazardous area and a clean one. Workers at the Paducah site were supposed to remove radiation-tainted clothing and footwear before crossing through these zones to ensure they didn’t unwittingly transfer dangerous materials to other parts of the plant or transport it home with them.

Fowler flagged down a worker leaving the building where the warning sign was posted. “You don’t have a step-off pad down here,” Fowler said. The worker shrugged and said there was nothing to worry about.

“That sign says otherwise,” Fowler said. He explained that protocol required a pad and training for workers so they knew how to use it.

The worker’s expression was unchanged as he walked away.

Fowler’s pulse quickened as he imagined invisible particles on boot soles spreading throughout the plant or, worse, tracking onto kitchen floors or into rooms where children played. He hurried to his division manager’s office. The supervisor listened, then leaned back in his chair and tapped a pen on his desk calendar. He said he’d call a meeting about the issue.

That night at home, Fowler sat at the kitchen table watching Sandi cook. Normally, he’d have been joking with his wife about her limited culinary range—she often made breakfast for dinner—but tonight his mind was elsewhere. The sizzle from the stove filled the silence between them.

Sandi knew something was wrong. In the years since they first met at a bar in Joliet, Illinois, she’d become attuned to her husband’s moods. Despite his imposing frame—six foot two, 245 pounds—Fowler had always been the gentle sort and quick to laugh. Their courtship progressed quickly, and within four months of meeting Fowler had moved in to her family’s home in Aurora. They married there so her father, a former school principal paralyzed from a stroke, could attend.

“What is it, Ron?” Sandi asked, spatula in hand.

He sighed. “Something’s not right at work.”

“What do you mean?”

“The way they treat radiation—like it can’t hurt them. No precautions,” Fowler said.

“That doesn’t make sense,” Sandi replied, frowning.

“I know.” Fowler shook his head. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Uranium is a silvery-white radioactive metal. More than 99 percent of it found in nature is U-238, and the rest is U-235, an isotope that can sustain the chain reactions needed to fuel nuclear power production and atomic weapons. Enrichment is the process of increasing the concentration of U-235 in a supply of uranium. At different points, enrichment produces one powder Paducah workers called black oxide—not to be confused with the coating of the same name applied to some metals to improve corrosion resistance—and another, uranium tetraflouride, that’s known as green salt. Eventually, uranium hexafluoride, a colorless crystalline solid, is heated into a gas that’s pushed through microscopic porous barriers. This process, called gaseous diffusion, separates U-235 from U-238; at plants like the one in Paducah, it’s done hundreds of times in a cascade until the desired enrichment level is reached.

Uranium enrichment is hazardous business. Fowler knew that any leak, spill, or accident at the Paducah plant could damage kidneys and lungs, irritate skin, and increase cancer risk. More insidiously, simple mistakes or oversights by workers could have that same result. During his first few weeks on the job, Fowler explored the plant on his own, and what he found unsettled him. Employees worked in radioactive areas without protective suits or masks. Some couldn’t read and might not understand warning signs. People left the site after their shifts without changing clothes or showering, likely conveying radioactive dust home to their families. Some workers even warmed their lunch on top of machines in hazardous areas.

Fowler knew that things needed to change, and quickly. He took his concerns to the plant manager, Steve Polston, who heard him out and then called a meeting about step-off pads—the very issue Fowler had flagged on his first day. At the meeting, Fowler outlined the safety gaps he’d observed at the plant, but it seemed to him as though the senior managers in the room could barely feign interest. He heard what would become something of a refrain: “We’ve been doing it this way for years.” He was also told that Department of Energy officials visited the site regularly and hadn’t raised concerns.

More worried than ever, Fowler spent the next several months developing new safety protocols. He beamed with satisfaction as he handed the plan to Polston. In the period that followed, however, he became frustrated with how officials implemented the measures. Even when company-issued safety equipment was made available, Fowler noticed that much of it was obsolete. And he watched in disbelief as employees poked holes in respirator masks to smoke while working.

“I’m not making progress,” he told Sandi one night between sips from a can of Miller Lite. “No one is listening.” He likened his work to “scooping water out of the ocean.”

Sandi, who had studied his training manual to understand his work, gently touched his arm. “Be patient,” she suggested. “Maybe you just have to get to know the people better.”

Fowler’s shoulders dropped. “It seems like more than that,” he said.