Monroe — At St. Michael the Archangel School, students like me rarely thought about the nuclear reactor nearby. But we did have evacuation drills. Once a year, teachers loaded us onto buses in the middle of the day and drove us south toward Ohio.
No one ever spoke about what would happen if disaster struck. Maybe we’d all just feel a little seasick. Maybe our hair would thin. Maybe we’d hide under desks at some Toledo-area middle school as our faces melted off. The ride felt like a silly box we had to check. After 20 minutes down I-75, we’d circle back and return to school.
Local kids call the Fermi II nuclear reactor the “cloud machine.” Its billowing steam drifts out over Lake Erie. Compared with the coal-fired power plant nearby, the nuclear plant feels futuristic and clean. Since coming online in 1988, Fermi II has produced 200 billion kilowatt-hours of carbon-free electricity and currently provides about 850 solid middle-class jobs.
In a place where there are never hurricanes, and tornadoes and earthquakes are rare, no one considers disaster. People swim and camp at Sterling State Park, just a few miles down the beach from a facility that breaks uranium atoms apart. Fishermen gut their catch near the boat ramp. Residents are far more concerned about the lake’s algae blooms than they are about radiation poisoning, even though you can see the towers from Stony Point. Any latent fear leaks out as jokes about kids growing gills and legends about boys who caught three-eyed fish.
The level of trust Monroe County residents have in the nuclear reactor is surprising, considering that the first version, Fermi I, suffered a partial meltdown on Oct. 5, 1966. Fermi I was a breeder reactor, a temperamental design, and the incident caused 1% of the fuel to melt. An emergency shutdown ended the crisis after 20 minutes with no serious injuries or radiation leaks.
The meltdown inspired a 1975 book, “We Almost Lost Detroit,” and a 1977 Gil Scott Heron song by the same name meant to terrify listeners. Heron wanted the world to think that a nuclear disaster almost wiped one of America’s iconic cities off the map.
After the meltdown, a joke went around that someone had knocked a beer can into the reactor, which, given the drinking habits of the locals, is almost believable. Engineers later determined that a zirconium plate, originally installed as a safety measure, had broken loose, causing the partial meltdown. Fermi I closed in late 1972, when planning for its second iteration was already under way.
After Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima, you’d think residents might have clamored to close Fermi II at some point. But apart from occasional dust-ups with activists about waste storage or bogus cancer-rate statistics in the surrounding area, there isn’t much noise about shutting it down. The first reactor’s safety systems worked, and everyone expects the same with the current one.
If Michigan wants to grow, it needs more energy. Detroit’s solution is to install fields of solar panels in some city neighborhoods, and likely hire folks to shovel snow off of them for a third of the year. But engineers at Palisades nuclear plant near Lake Michigan are working to bring the reactor back online in October 2025, thanks in part to funds from President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. Even the leftists agree that nuclear power is an acceptable energy source.
Another atom smasher on the Great Lakes will be a good thing. And the vacationers sunning themselves down the beach in South Haven? It won’t trouble them at all.
Mark Naida is managing editor of Michigan Enjoyer.
