Opinion: Zimmer station had troubled history as a nuclear power plant
A Feb. 1 guest editorial, "Coverting Zimmer plant to nuclear will contain energy costs," argued for converting the now-defunct William H. Zimmer coal station back to nuclear. We should understand Zimmer’s troubled history as a nuclear power plant before embarking on any kind of conversion.
In 1969, Cincinnati Gas and Electric, Columbus and Southern Ohio Electric, and Dayton Power and Light announced their intention to build a $395-million nuclear power plant in Moscow, Ohio, to service the Tristate area. CG&E joined many other utilities ordering nuclear units in the 1960s, following the commercialization of nuclear energy in 1954. In the post-World War II era, when Americans were using unprecedented amounts of electricity, power companies and the federal government argued that, despite high construction and fuel costs, high-capacity nuclear power plants would make electricity "too cheap to meter," as one Atomic Energy Commission chairman said. And Atomic Energy Commission officials, as the ones regulating nuclear power, insisted on its operational safety.
CG&E procured a construction permit in 1972 from the AEC, and then, as they were building the plant, sought an operational license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the successor agency of the AEC. In 1984, when Zimmer was 99% complete, with $1.7 billion in sunken costs, and still unlicensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the utilities cancelled it, later converting Zimmer to coal.
What happened?
By 1980, dozens of whistleblowing workers, engineers and government inspectors filed affidavits against safety, management and construction errors at the plant, citing thousands of examples of defective equipment, poor workmanship, failed inspections and mismanagement. In 1981, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission fined CG&E $200,000 for a "widespread breakdown" in safety and quality assurance, then the largest fine against a nuclear plant under construction. In the summer of 1982, the Federal Emergency Management Administration failed CG&E on emergency planning/evacuation procedures, and later that year, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission shut down safety-related construction at Zimmer, mandating CG&E had to hire an independent auditor and construction manager to finish the plant.
With a final price tag of around $10 billion in current dollars, Zimmer’s costs grew to be almost 9 times larger than originally projected, and CG&E, C&SOE and DP&L ratepayers were forced to pay a portion of these wasted construction expenses in their monthly utility bills. Through the 15-year debacle, despite obvious signs of utility mismanagement and poor Nuclear Regulatory Commission regulation, CG&E and NRC officials ignored and sidelined any critique of the project, unilaterally forging ahead.
By the early 1980s, 20,000 people across the Tristate region mobilized into a coalition against Zimmer. It included parents, homeowners, CG&E, C&SOE and DP&L customers, city of Cincinnati officials, construction trades, Zimmer whistleblowers, coal and railroad miners, environmental and peace activists, lawyers and scientists, consumer rights groups, and the local NAACP, led by Marian Spencer. Members agreed on one thing: that they lived in a democracy and had a right to register concern over Zimmer’s safety and costs and to be heard by the AEC, NRC, CG&E, and the Atomic Safety and Licensing Boards. People demanded government accountability and united, temporarily, over the lack of it. Insisting that Zimmer was too unsafe and expensive as a power plant, they instead called for conservation measures and CG&E investment in renewable energy, and ultimately made the hard decision to advocate for coal.
Dozens of other nuclear power plants were ordered in the 1960s, built in the 1970s, and cancelled or converted to another fuel by the 1980s. Around 1980, over 100 nuclear reactor units for power plants had met this fate. Called "the largest managerial disaster in business history" by Forbes in 1985, commercial nuclear power faltered due to utility incompetence, AEC and NRC mismanagement, inaccurate energy demand projections, and the poor economy of the 1970s. Many plants had safety issues, raised by whistleblowers, and many were dramatically over budget.
Today, we should understand what has changed with nuclear power since the 1970s and 1980s − e.g., newer generations of nuclear reactors have passive safety improvements that do not require human intervention, decreasing the likelihood of a major accident − and we should understand what has not changed in the U.S.
Safety remains a question. Most nuclear power plants still in operation were built in the 1970s and 1980s, and as they were built to last about 30 years, the NRC has been giving "lifetime extensions" for 40 to 60 years. The likelihood of a malfunction increases with a station’s age.
Quality assurance, accountability and high costs remain an issue. The Tennessee Valley Authority’s Watts Bar nuclear power plant, built in the 1970s and 1980s, was later mothballed due to declining energy demand, rising costs and serious construction concerns raised by whistleblowers. In 1995, the NRC confirmed whistleblowers’ affidavits on damaged electrical cables, poor welding work and missing or fabricated quality assurance documents. In 1996, one of the reactor units went into service; the other sat there after estimates revealed it would cost $2.5 billion to finish it. It actually took $4.3 billion to finish it, and its licensure was still held up by quality assurance problems.
In 2013, the NRC fined the TVA $70,000 for not verifying the quality of safety equipment at the unit, and in 2017, the NRC announced that the TVA had repressed and ignored whistleblowing workers’ concerns at Watts Bar. Another example: in 2017, South Carolina Electric and Gas Company and the Santee Cooper Company abandoned two new half-finished Westinghouse reactors at the V.C. Summer Nuclear Station near Columbia. After construction delays, soaring costs, contractor mismanagement, quality assurance issues and Westinghouse’s bankruptcy declaration, the utilities cancelled the reactors. They had sunk $9 billion into the construction, which ratepayers are now shouldering.
Nuclear power faltered in the 1970s when the poor economy made Americans reduce their energy use, causing many communities with a nuclear power plant under construction or operation to ask: Is this even needed? So, today, is electric demand growing at a fast-enough rate to justify spending the money on expensive nuclear power stations, even smaller modular ones?
Finally, we still do not have a long-term solution for the safe disposal of waste from nuclear power plants or a solution for the toll uranium mining has on the land and on human bodies (which historically has fallen on indigenous peoples who did the mining and/or who live near it). The U.S. now imports most of its uranium from Canada, Russia and Australia but also from less developed places like Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Namibia, raising human rights issues there.
Alyssa McClanahan is an environmental and urban historian from Cincinnati. Her first book (2021) was "Findlay Market: A History," and her second book explores the troubled history of the Zimmer nuclear power plant.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Opinion: Zimmer station had troubled history as a nuclear power plant
