The Case for Safe and Affordable Energy: The Community Fight against the William Zimmer Nuclear Power Plant, 1969–1985

In 1971, David Fankhauser and his wife, Jill, left Johns Hopkins University, graduate degrees in hand, and headed for New Richmond, Ohio. Soon to be parents, the couple rented land near the Ohio River, to farm and garden organically and live as self-reliantly and healthfully as possible. Hired soon after by the University of Cincinnati–Clermont, Fankhauser worked as a biology professor there while he and his wife raised their family in the river plain. Today, it is a beautiful, sleepy stretch of land, which the Fankhausers now own, crowded with heavy, old trees, homegrown crops and grazing livestock. Yet the serenity of that place was once deeply threatened. As much as the Fankhausers wanted to distance their family from synthetic chemicals and consumer excess, almost immediately after arriving in Cincinnati they found out that Cincinnati Gas & Electric Company (CG&E), along with two other regional utilities, Dayton Power & Light (DP&L) and Columbus and Southern Ohio Electric Company (C&SOE), had plans to construct a nuclear power plant near Moscow, Ohio—just upriver and upwind.¹

Dr. David Fankhauser

cincinnati enquirer, october 26, 1976

Trained as a geneticist who used radiation in the laboratory to induce mutations in bacteria, Fankhauser was already critical of nuclear energy, yet after talking with his neighbors he quickly realized few others in Cincinnati understood its risks. Each morning, he read the latest edition of the Cincinnati Enquirer; that it often contained op-eds praising the future William H. Zimmer Nuclear Power Plant deeply worried him. People merely assumed Zimmer would make its nearby communities wealthy. After being involved in funding nuclear technology research since the 1950s, CG&E announced plans for its own nuclear station in September 1969, marketing it as an economic stimulus for the area and a panacea for the region's power needs. At a time when American electricity usage seemed to be skyrocketing, CG&E joined other utilities that were taking advantage of the nuclear industry's growing commercialization. Given the seven electric power plants in the two hundred miles between Portsmouth, Ohio, and Madison, Indiana—hence, the river valley's reputation as "pollution alley"—Zimmer was also supposed to be a cleaner solution for regional electricity. Fankhauser knew his rural community needed the jobs, yet he believed that all nuclear technology carried an unavoidable risk, a lethal, if latent, one that imperiled human health.²

The winning nuclear power station design.

cincinnati enquirer, march 2, 1972

He learned that CG&E's original plan was to begin construction in 1971, procure an operating license from the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) (later, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission [NRC]), and produce electricity by January 1975. Initial cost projections added up to $240 million. He also learned of ongoing public hearings, held by the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB), to evaluate Zimmer's environmental, safety, and construction qualities. He went to one. The forums lasted for hours and frustrated Fankhauser. They revealed CG&E's intent to meet minimum safety standards; citizens were permitted only a few minutes to speak their minds; and the ASLB refused to entertain Fankhauser's concerns that radiation leakage from the plant would inevitably drift toward human populations, including the city of Cincinnati. Yet he did not give up. He had been, after all, a Freedom Rider during the civil rights movement. Instead, Fankhauser hired a lawyer to help him gain intervenor status. It was the first step in his decade-long ardent activism against Zimmer.³

CG&E executives tour nuclear construction site. CGE Annual Report, 1973.

courtesy of duke energy corporate library and archives

He was not alone. The nuclear plant saw neither quick licensure nor widespread support; instead, from the early 1970s to the mid-1980s, a wide cross-section of concerned citizens, plant workers, and city and county offi-cials from across the tristate region vocally opposed Zimmer. Opposition especially included community...