Oh the reaction that would happen now should any perceived as dangerous if not truly dangerous project were to be hidden around a major metro area or within. Considering the uproar slowly evolving over Ebola, the CDC, and hospitals who treated people, it doesn't take much this day and age to generate interest or work on people's fears.
I think the reaction would have been muted by the fact that the project was long gone by the time the details were widely known. And the danger of radiation was also not widely appreciated until the 50s.
I used to work a few years ago in/around some of the Columbia buildings used by the project, where the football-players-trucking-uranium-through-the-tunnels story was well-known. The story ended with: those players all died young, mostly from cancer. Maybe that part of the story is harder to confirm; it was left out of the OP.
