Brian with Author Alyssa McClanahan 5/16/2025

Zimmer: The Movement That Defeated a Nuclear Power Plant

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Eight oh five, ninety five kr CD Talk stationing. Very
Happy Friday to you by the Timas. Please to welcome
my next guest, local author, and I enjoy having local
authors on the program, Alyssa McClanahan. She is described as
a writer scholar specializing in historic preservation and public urban
as well as environmental history, as a PhD from my
alma mater, PhD in History from the University of Cincinnati,

(00:23):
and she's also the author of a book that we'll
not be talking about today, Findley Market is Cincinnati, which
uses Findley Market as a vehicle to explore the larger
history of US cities. Welcome to the program, Alyssa. It's
a pleasure to have you on today.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
Hello, thank you for having me. Good morning.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
It's my pleasure. And the name of the book we're
talking about today, Zimmer, the movement that defeated a nuclear
power plant. I remember the saga Zimmer to a certain degree.
It goes back quite a few years. But the original
Zimmer nuclear power plant, as I understand it was announcer,
proposed back in nineteen sixty nine.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Yes, correct, Yeah, it goes back quite a bit.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
And so when did the first shovel hit the ground.
When did the construction begin on Zimmer.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
Very soon after that? They got a construction permit to
start significant amount of work in nineteen seventy two, but
they were allowed to do kind of like raising and
prepping the site prior to that construction permit. And then
when they canceled the project in nineteen eighty four converting
it to a coal plant, it was then ninety nine

(01:33):
percent built, So the majority of it was built from
seventy two to eighty.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
Four, So it took about fifteen years to get it
ninety nine percent done and then they pulled a plug
on it.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
Correct. Yeah, so the book explores this saga, this drama.

Speaker 1 (01:48):
Well, let's talk about the saga and drama, because I mean,
I'm a fan of the concept of nuclear power. I'm
not a global warming believer. I'm not a climate change believer,
but you know, if getting carbon out of the air
is in important and the best way to do that
and provided abundance of cheap, pollution free electricity is a
nuclear power plant. They produce a lot of electricity and

(02:09):
comparatively small footprint nowadays. But this was your more traditional
old school cooling tower nuclear plant.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
Correct, Yes, Yes, yes. So the big thing the book
is up to is taking the story of Zimmer, which
is one can test a nuclear power plants, and exploring
the larger history of nuclear power as it took off
and then kind of faltered in the US in the

(02:36):
sixties and seventies into the early eighties. One of the
things that I want to do for readers is, as
we're thinking about reinvesting in nuclear power now for a
variety of reasons, as you mentioned, I think we just
need to understand this very recent history in the sixties
and seventies and eighties. You know, we heavily tried to

(02:56):
invest in it in those decades, and the industry faltered
significantly at significant costs to utility companies, many of which
went bankrupt to utility customers. And so I think I
would I want to share the hang ups of that
industry by looking at one interesting story, one local story,

(03:17):
to give readers some you know, some good knowledge, some
good information to think about it today. Because because you're right,
they produce enormous amounts of energy compared to a coal plant,
for instance, they are still incredibly expensive to build, which
was one of the issues back then. They still you know,
have other hang ups too. They still produce significant numbers

(03:40):
of whistle blowing workers who say this isn't safe, this
was installed correctly, That was an issue back then. As
the book explores, they still have issues with quality control
and assurance. We still have no safe way to actually
dispose of the waste, so they're not you know, really renewable.
So there's significant issues with them that we just need

(04:01):
to think through today. And I'm hoping that by exploring,
you know, very recent history through a good story, that
readers can get some of that good knowledge so they
can better think about nuclear power today. Well that's what
I'm up to.

Speaker 1 (04:15):
That's great, and I think it's an outstanding effort that
you've engaged in here, because you know, small modular small
modular reactors these days are nowhere anything like the Zimmer
Power Plan or those old school nuclear reactors. They're completely
different technologies, much smaller, easier to operate, and much less
a waste coming out of them, if any. I've heard

(04:36):
many people say that there really isn't any at all,
but ignoring the realities of modern nuclear actors when it
comes to the whistleblowers that were that were coming out,
and I even remember hearing news stories about that that
it was unsafe whistle blowers coming out the construction concerns.
Were those legitimate complaints by legitimate people, or were those
motivated by political activism.

Speaker 2 (04:58):
Yeah, that's a great question the former. Actually, So what
I found was Zimmer. The vast majority of whistleblowers came
out in the late seventies early eighties, so this is
years into the plant going under construction. These are pretty
much exclusively men who work at the plant or inspect
the plant, and they are very, very hesitant to come forward.

(05:25):
Many of them described their life thereafter were just wrecked.
They were made paries in their communities, they lost their job,
their family felt unsafe. They were incredibly hesitant to come forward.
But these were men who ultimately felt like they wanted
to point out some serious safety issues. Not all of

(05:46):
them had serious safety issues they were pointing out some
of them were not in safety related things that they
just felt like, I'm a quality control inspector, this isn't
how you do this kind of a thing, you know,
the procedural things, which I respect. Others were pointing out
thousands of very serious safety issues with Zimmer, to the
point that they ended up having to tire lawyers to

(06:09):
represent them. And so there's a law firm actually out
a DC that came in just this one guy who
was very young at the time, and he represented them,
and I talked to him quite a lot because he himself,
like you, you know, isn't opposed a nuclear power on
principle by any means, but he was just very struck
by how all of these men were so fearful and

(06:31):
felt like, I need to come forward. And when they
would give public testimony, these would you they would use
voice distortion machines, they would cover themselves in drapes, looking
like ghosts. Essentially, they didn't want to have any of
their names released. As a historian, looking at my sources,
very few of their names are actually out there. So

(06:53):
these are people who were threatened with physical violence. Many
of them lost their jobs, and so it's it was
it felt very very real to me, you know. The
popular protest movement that emerged across the Cincinnati area was
this gradual evolution of some folks that were opposed to
it on principle. They were kind of the early activists,

(07:15):
and later more and more folks signed on because they
were listening to whistleblowers. They were paying for Zimmer even
though it wasn't producing power. And I think, you know,
the whistle blowers, you know, the vast majority of them
liked nuclear power. It gave them a really high paying,
good job, and so they were really, really hesitant to

(07:36):
come forward. And when I talked to the men and
women that worked with them that got them to kind
of come forward, those people just said, you know, we
need to understand Zimmer is not unique in this. It's
not an aberration that the nuclear power industry, nuclear weapons
production facilities produced a huge numbers of whistleblowers in the

(07:59):
seventies and eight, and so we I think we need
to dig into that whi is quality control and assurance
missing in that industry, and the book explores that. You know,
we we've got a rather hands off regulatory system with
that industry at large. And so again, if we're thinking
about it today, we need to make sure that that
is that that's not the issue anymore, because we want

(08:19):
people working at these plans to feel safe, and we
definitely want the families living around them to feel like,
you know, as a mom myself, you can raise your
kid in the shadow of one of these and know
that it's safe. So yeah, I enjoyed researching this because
the protests that emerged over it came from all these

(08:40):
different angles where some people question, you know, well what
if there is an accident, and other people question just
the regular radiation that comes from it at low levels,
you know, is that safe for my farm or my kids.
Other people were really concerned about the cost. Ohio has
to have state provision that once you completed a new

(09:00):
power plant seventy five percent complete, you could include its
costs on utility customers bills, and so towards the end
of the zimmer Saga, utility customers were paying for a
very expensive, very overbudget plant that wasn't yet producing power,
and so customers, particularly working class and low income folks,

(09:20):
got very upset because they're paying for something that they're
not even benefiting from. And so it's this really kind
of weird, beautiful story of this protest movement that's not
really a movement, but like twelve movements combined. And it
was very interesting to study because it's like a lot
of different perspectives, liberals, conservatives, all sorts of people that
had something to say about it. And I very much

(09:42):
enjoyed that.

Speaker 1 (09:44):
Oh, I imagine, and I can see how this coalition
would build with all the stories coming out. And you
had the initial protesters, the environmentalists, which just I think
stood on, well, it's nuclear airG it has to be bad.
Because this protest started before Three Mile Island hit and
CO through my line, fueled the fire of that activism.
They thought every single one of these plants represented an

(10:05):
existential threat to the general community, if not you know,
the state, or the geographic area. We're the large geographic area.
But you mentioned government regulations, and it seems to me
that in modern times, governmental regulations are the ones that
stand in the way of progress. And I thought maybe
that was one of the reasons why it took so

(10:25):
long to at least from the start of the project
to nineteen eighty four when they pulled the plug on it,
that maybe the regulatory environment was part of the problem.
But you suggested it, No, it wasn't.

Speaker 2 (10:36):
So it's a little bit of both. What's so interesting
about why nuclear power in this country takes off and
then kind of to be a bit dramatic like crashes
and burns is a host of factors, and so I
try to explore this in a really hopefully readable way
in the Zimmer book. So protest is one aspect of it,
but honestly, they're not really the one thinking the project.

(11:00):
It's actually the money. And I think protests, you know,
raises people's awareness of the money in a very important way.
But it's the money that really really drives utility companies
to cancel these projects. And to your point, part of
the enormity of costs in that era was because there's
this growing governmental review process, in part because of the

(11:23):
environmental movement, and a lot of that was frankly very good.
We want to make sure that these things are built safely.
But on the other hand, if you're you know, sympathetic
to these utility companies, which I try to be in
the book, you're just holding costs or growing and growing
and growing as you have to go from one public
hearing to the next, and then you need twelve different
agencies to review this thing. That is a lot, and

(11:46):
so you feel for them. In addition to that growing
governmental review, there's also the issue that the one government
agency that's tasked with trying to get these things on
air safely, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and took an incredibly
hands off approach to that regulation in a way that
ultimately drug out the process instead of made it more efficient.

(12:09):
They deferred pretty much all of the quality control to utilities,
and utilities had no experience building nuclear power plants in
the sixties and seventies because no one did. It was
very new technology good, so they, you know, they kind
of went at it with a lot of the attitude
of well, I know how to build a coal plant,
and they did, they were very good at that, but

(12:30):
no one knew how to build a nuclear power plant.
And as you mentioned earlier, they were huge back then,
physically huge, and they required redundant, redundant, redundant quality control
to make sure that they were built well and that
the men building them were safe and the families nearby
were safe. And we just didn't understand that at large,
that that's the way you got got to do it.

(12:52):
And so because of that kind of lack of quality
regulation and deferred regulation to utility, then they were built
pretty poorly, and so then they had to go back
and fix themselves over and over again, which is what
happens was Zimmer. They get fined by the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission babying c Genie for not building it. Well, they

(13:15):
got to go back and fix it. They get another fine,
they got to go back and fix it. So you
do feel bad for the Cincinati Gas and Electric officials
at different points because they just seem like they're trying
and they're not succeeding. They certainly were a group of
rather arrogant officials. They thought they knew what they were doing.
They were very uninterested in outside input. But you also

(13:37):
feel sympathetic to them because you know, I'm married to
a man that runs a construction based business. Those are
really hard businesses to run, and utilities building massive power plants.
I mean, it's one of the most capital intensive industries
in the US. And we also have to understand that
another factor that sunk nuclear power was that they're building

(13:59):
these things in the set seventies. That was when the
post war economic boom ended and it was yeah, yeah,
and so that meant that whatever you thought your construction
costs are going to be, they suddenly skyrocket. And that
is not their fault. You know, they could have maybe projected, okay,
what if we do have a recession. They could have

(14:19):
done a better job with that but some of that
was out of their control. And so what's so interesting
about nuclear power is that it's kind of like six different, big,
chunky factors that converge to think the industry instead of
just one singular thing, and that so it's a really layered,
nuanced story, and I'm trying to use just one singular

(14:41):
place to help readers understand those different factors. And then
again think about, Okay, well, what can we do today?

Speaker 1 (14:47):
Amen offering suggestions and solutions for problems from real life experience.
Zimmer The Movement that Defeated a Nuclear Power Plant by
my guest today, local author. I'll listen mcclanahand listen. This
has been a fascinating conversation. I'm sure my listeners will
be thrilled about getting a copy of the book since
we have such a close connection with it here locally.
I will have my producer put it on my blog

(15:09):
page fifty five cars dot com. But folks, if you're interested,
it is available on Amazon. Zimmer of the Movement that
Defeated a Nuclear Power Plant. My regular producers out today,
so I don't know that Danny is how to update
my page, but it'll Oh, Danny, you can do it wonderful,
then we'll add the link. ALYSSA real pleasure to day.
Thanks for documenting this in this wonderful book.

Speaker 2 (15:29):
Thank you so much for having me my pleasure,