Marble Hill Nuclear Power Plant (Abandoned)

USA / Indiana / New Washington /
 nuclear power plant, unfinished / unbuilt

Abandoned Nuclear power plant. In 1973, when Marble Hill was first proposed, Public Service Indiana (PSI, now Duke Energy) said the construction cost would be a whopping $700 million, the largest capital project in Indiana history. When the public hearings on the project were completed in September, 1977, estimated construction costs had doubled to $1.4 billion.

At that time, there was concern on the part of skeptics that the cost estimates by PSI were skewed to the low side to keep burgeoning opponents from using economic arguments against the plant.

Construction began in the late fall of 1977 and seemed to be going well. Lots of money was being spent and most folks around Madison welcomed the new jobs and the economic activity they brought. And though opposition to the plant grew steadily, PSI continued to suggest the plant would be ready to generate electricity by 1982.

But then came the disaster at Three Mile Island in late March 1979. There, entire systems failed and the super hot core of activated uranium in one of the reactors melted causing pressure to build up inside the containment building. A larger disaster was averted after a tense three-day period that had hydrogen building up inside the containment that, if released, could spell death and future disease and economic destruction for thousands of people who lived downwind or downstream.

Three Mile Island changed everything nuclear. The fear caused by the near meltdown was widespread and crossed all socio-economic boundaries. That fear permeated all nuclear developments and Marble Hill was no exception.

Construction did proceed on Marble Hill, but at a somewhat slower pace with more regulatory emphasis on safety issues. Then a symbolic bombshell dropped on the project when, on May 8, 1979, Charles Cutshall, a former employee of Marble Hill's general contractor, Gust K. Newburg, filed an affidavit indicating that he and other Newburg employees had been told to "cover up" construction defects before inspectors could find them.

Specifically, the defects that Cutshall revealed were in the concrete poured in the walls of the containment buildings. Cutshall claimed that "honeycombs" were in a number of areas of the vital containment structure that would protect people from a breach of radioactive gas should a situation like Three Mile Island happen at Marble Hill.

In what was to become a public relations nightmare for PSI, construction on the plant was shut down on three different occasions during the summer of 1979. PSI's chairman, Hugh Barker, in an act of desperation in an employee magazine titled Watts Cookin claimed, "One is forced to ask what's really behind the anti-nuclear movement? Who is fanning the flames of fear and irrational emotion?"

Asking the question, Barker then attempted to answer his question. "Two British experts on Soviet propaganda accuse the Soviet Union of funding and manipulating anti-nuclear movements in the west...the radicals among the anti-nuclear forces, by whatever name, clearly have as their goal, the transformation of our democratic, free society."

But for Marble Hill and most nuclear plants around the country, time was running out in the aftermath of Three Mile Island. Construction costs exploded to the point that companies could not hire enough people or throw enough money at these flawed proposals to complete their construction.

A few nukes were completed, but only after years of construction and huge cost overruns. Marble Hill was finally shut down in 1984 when it finally became apparent to the government of Gov. Robert Orr that completion of the plant might end up causing bankruptcy for not only PSI but also their customers, who could ill afford the gigantic increases in rates that Marble Hill would cause.

When it finally closed, more than $2.8 billion had been spent on construction, and it was only 20% complete. Finally, someone was listening to the economic arguments that enviros had been making for seven years about the ridiculous cost of the plant.

source: www.bloomingtonalternative.com/subscribers/news.php?top... 27jul03

Some major demolition work was begun in 2005.
Nearby cities:
Coordinates:   38°36'5"N   85°27'8"W

Comments

  • This article has been floating around since 2003 and is the source of much mis-information. First of all please keep in mind that the article was written by JOHN BLAIR who was (is?) president of "Save the Valley", an environmental group that opposed the building of Marble Hill generating station, as can be gleened from the biased way information is presented. After discussing this article with a former Marble Hill nuclear engineer and the first site manager a couple of facts come to light. First, there were indeed honeycombs in the concrete, as there is in all concrete construction, but in Marble Hill's case, there were also test methods that were used to find these air pockets and standards precudured in place to repair them. This was a run of the mill test and correct process that some people tried to turn into a scandle because the work "nuclear" was attached. The plant was also much farther along that the article's stated 20%. Unit 2 was 50% complete and Unit 1 was 80% finished (maybe he meant 20% to go?!?) In fact Unit 1 had all major components installed (reactor, condensor, steam generator) and work had accelerated (not slowed as stated) on Unit 1 in hopes to get it generating power as soon as possbile because of the cost pressures that were starting to threaten the project. Cost, was indeed the thing that killed the project. Poor cost management and NCR mandated safety improvements resulting from the 3 Mile Island caused money to have to be borrowed and in this time of "stagflation" when interest rates were in the double digits finally doomed the project.
  • I would not be surprised if he did. That F**ker has caused more than enough bulls**t in Southwestern Indiana, where he lives. He is a never-ending source of irritation and disgust of nearly all of Vanderburgh County's Neighbors, to say nothing of the region as a whole, including Southeastern Illinois and Northwestern Kentucky. People like Blair Bring out the worst in everbody, city and rural alike. His favorite topic of late is the I-69 Project.
  • PS he is the "President" of Valleywatch, and is pretty much the only active member of it.
  • I remember reading somewhere that a movie company half filled one of the domes with warm water and did all of the underwater filming for a movie in it. Think it was either The Deep or Leviathon.
  • Waltt60, are you thinking of the James Cameron movie The Abyss? That was filmed at the abandoned Old Cherokee County Nuclear Power Plant in Gaffney, South Carolina.
  • If the plant had been completed it would have failed in the event of an accident. I worked for Newburg Const. There were other projects around the country that were finished. Good luck with that.
  • Look at fukushima, cherynoble, three mile island, who knows how much we're being radiated by government testing alone, we need clean safe energy, not nuclear! It is clearly a planetary hazard.
  • Yeah Planetary nuclear hazard like that pesky SUN ... lol
  • My wife and I were both design engineers employed by Sargent & Lundy Enginners in the early 80's. S&L was the engineering company who designed Marble Hill. We both designed piping support systems. We both left from S&L prior to the shutdown of Marble Hill when we got married in 1982 and we moved to Pennslyvania and went to work for Bechtel Power at 2 other nukes. Best move I ever made was to leave S&L prior to the MH shutdown.
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This article was last modified 17 years ago