Paradoxically, one of the more difficult considerations this team faced was what to do with the four massive buildings at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant (PGDP), which at the time of construction, were among the largest on the planet.

One would think that a team of architecture students would know precisely what should be done with the buildings, but our hesitation was two-fold. First, there is the issue of whether their historical use has left them too contaminated to even consider for future uses, and next, if we were to push for their reuse, there would be the necessity for whatever we were proposing to be as extraordinary as the structures are themselves. In short, what we propose would need to live up to this challenge.

It did not take long to make the decision to keep the buildings in our proposal. Polemically, they need to stay. If we are to claim the audacity of the original Manhattan Project scientists then we needed to believe that anything is possible. When it came time to propose what might occupy the buildings and the site, rather than proposing something spectacular of similar scale – like an amusement park – we instead chose to focus on something much more audacious. We wanted to find a way in which the site could fulfill the original brief: to continue operation as an economic generator for the city of Paducah and for the region at large for the foreseeable future.

Taking the lessons we’ve learned regarding the necessary networking and constructive interconnections of Energy, Economy, Education and Environment (the four E’s), we sought to propose a dynamically equilibrated future scenario for the site that would hopefully lead to future growth. Ultimately, the proposal for the site also became a description of the interrelationships proposed between the four “E’s” in our healthy communities hypothesis.

To successfully clean up the plume, we need a commitment to research and education that would provide the knowledge base to make it happen. The outcome of that research would generate an industry of remediation technologies at the nexus of biotechnology and robotics that would occur on the site. To attract and power this industry, we would need access to safe, clean energy that we propose would be the focus of yet another research and education facility, also on utilize the (at some estimates) two-century supply of nuclear site. This effort would work to find the cleanest, safest way to energy already present. We propose (with borrowed courage from our Manhattan Project inspiration) that this happen at the PGDP.

Ultimately, the intellectual capital generated through the successful research, development and remediation industry generated at PGDP can become an exportable commodity. We imagine this to transform the region into the attractor that it could be – perhaps even resurrecting Paducah’s rail past – and becoming the nexus of an American maglev rail line.

Paducah is in an advantageous position to serve as a model of industry growth and environmental remediation in the next century. In this way, the Atomic Cities Research Group believes that the problem could ultimately be the solution.