Well, they did… for a while. But you can’t keep a whole town and their main industry secret forever.
Wasn’t there also an enrichment facility in Hanford, Washington?
Hanford made plutonium. The enrichment plants were an intermediate step.
Back to the OP, when I arrived in Paducah in 1974, the natives had a sort of fatalistic calm about nuclear war. They knew that their part of the arms race was an A+ prime target for a first strike (the prevailing opinion was that Paducah was definitely in the top 20, but that might just have been local boosterism.) That gave them the blessed comfort that when the time came a) we wouldn’t have time to fret and b) it would all be over in a blinding flash.
I read 1984, and I was worried about communism.
When I was older, I worried less and understood more, which didn’t change my mind.
Born in '73, so alive during the later years of the Cold War and I was terrified. The Day After scared the bejeebus out of me. I used to see heat lightning at night and was terrified it was the bombs going off.
I went though a phase of less scared, and my fear has absolutely increased the last few years. I am coming to believe use of nuclear weapons in a conflict soon is almost inevitable (the whys are not necessarily appropriate for IMHO, so I’ll keep those to myself here).
Born in '52. It just seemed normal in the early '60’s that the Russians were evil. By the late '60’s, Vietnam was raging and getting drafted and sent there was a real possibility. People who though that the communists were after us just sort of seemed funny.
I definitely remember the Cuban missile crisis, but was too young to really appreciate the implications. After that, there was a collective sigh of relief and life went on.