Months of labor turmoil in Metropolis, Illinois are now threatening to undermine the town's cheery Superman atmosphere.

At the sprawling Honeywell Specialty Materials plant on Metropolis' outskirts, some 230 union workers take turns picketing at the nation's only site for refining uranium for eventual use in nuclear power plants. The picketers have been there since the company locked out the workers last June and brought in replacements.

The strikers are warning of possible toxic releases into the community while they're not at their jobs. They have planted dozens of small, white crosses near the highway to represent workers who have died of cancer, which they say could be linked to radiation exposure at the plant. And nearby stands a giant inflatable rat made to represent the company supplying the replacement "scabs."

The scenes reflect tensions growing in this town of 6,500, not only among neighbors but between the different parts of Metropolis' economic livelihood.

The dispute "really tears a community apart. You have friend pitted against friend," Mayor Billy McDaniel laments, noting the fraying of friendships between locked-out Honeywell workers and salaried, non-union employees still on the job. "We need that company, and we need those company men, those union workers, back in there -- now."

Jim Hambrick (pictured right), proprietor of the world famous Super Museum which is billed as "the Largest Superman Collection on the Planet," believes most of the town backs the locked-out workers. "If you look at it in terms of Superman, you've got good versus evil," he said.

McDaniel says he has faith in the town's resilience to weather the dispute, but wonders how long the suffering will continue.

"The longer it goes on, the worse it will get," he said.