The Ohio Valley’s Nuclear Moment: Marble Hill and Madison, Indiana

The Ohio Valley is a major center of power production in the United States. Most of this power comes from coal-fired power plants, many of them constructed from the mid- to late twentieth century, lining the banks of the Ohio River and its tributaries. While the Ohio Valley’s current energy reality is one of coal slowly giving way to cheaper natural gas, in the 1960s through the 1980s nuclear power challenged fossil fuels for dominance in the region. Nuclear energy provided hope for a clean alternative to native coal and the enrichment of local areas with new tax dollars, jobs, and technology. But two nuclear power plants stopped construction in the Ohio Valley in the 1980s, and both failed for reasons dogging nuclear power plants at the time: increased regulation and scrutiny after the accident at Three Mile Island, poor planning, and cost overruns.

Marble Hill Nuclear Power Plant. Madison Weekly Herald, January 17, 1984.

The story of one of these plants, Marble Hill in Indiana, shows the important local and regional dimensions of nuclear power’s failure in the United States. Marble Hill faced an uphill battle in a rural section of the valley, where a number of utilities planned generating stations and locals lost faith in the power of industry to reverse their economic fortunes. Local residents understood the financial reasons Marble Hill would fail in the region, and their strong opposition to the nuclear plant— and strong valuing of the historic architecture and rural environment of their local area—reflects the strength of a regional Ohio Valley environmental identity.¹

Marble Hill’s boom-and-bust story illustrates the complexities of building and operating a nuclear plant in the Ohio Valley in the 1970s, when locals grew to value their historic, rural environment and its potential economic power through tourism over industry. Marble Hill’s closest small-city neighbor, Madison, Indiana, is situated in the lower Ohio Valley between Cincinnati, Ohio, and Louisville, Kentucky, and is surrounded by small towns and farms. Madison is distinguished by two elements—an enormous coal-fired power plant, Clifty Creek, overlooking the Ohio River, and the historic downtown lining the riverfront. Locals frustrated with coal power’s pollution initially saw potential for Marble Hill to be a better neighbor than Clifty Creek.

Clifty Creek Generating Station (c. 1957).

jefferson county historical society

As a nuclear power plant, Marble Hill initially presented a cleaner alternative to coal and an economic boost to a quiet area and followed a decades-long trend of nuclear development in the valley. The Ohio Valley played a major role in the postwar security-based nuclear industry and in domestic nuclear power production; in the 1950s, the valley became a center of enrichment of fissionable uranium. Three uranium enrichment facilities operated there by 1956—in Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Paducah, Kentucky; and Piketon, Ohio—and fed the atomic weapons buildup of the early Cold War. The 1954 Atomic Energy Act opened nuclear power to private industry, while previously the government had controlled atomic power development. U.S. domestic nuclear power began in the upper Ohio Valley, in Shippingport, Pennsylvania, in 1957. Access to the Ohio River’s waters for cooling and proximity to large populations drove power growth in the valley, and the region’s large industrial base made it an attractive place for expensive power generating projects to flourish. After a series of coal-fired power plants grew in the Ohio Valley, the time was ripe for a nuclear power project. One writer heralded the Shippingport plant’s entrance as such: “Pittsburgh, the nation’s great steel city, is about to become the nation’s great electricity.” But after Shippingport, the valley did not see another nuclear project until the late 1960s.²

Shift change at the Y12 uranium enrichment facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee (c. 1945).

american museum of science and energy

President Eisenhower signing H. R...