Huegel: “A FRESH Perspective on the Bomb”
As military-industrial facilities spread across the countryside after WWII, many rural Americans found themselves facing issues of pollution and environmental hazards that had once seemed primarily urban problems. In this essay, Casey Huegel explains how the residents of Fernald, Ohio, organized in opposition to nuclear pollution, and through their actions demonstrated the potential power of rural activism.
Casey Huegel has a PhD in history from the University of Cincinnati
We welcome essays that apply the stories and methodologies of our allied fields to the issues that currently affect our daily lives. If you are interested in contributing, please contact Adrienne Petty at ampetty@wm.edu or Drew Swanson at dswanson@georgiasouthern.edu. This post should be cited as: Casey Huegel, “A FRESH Perspective on the Bomb,” The Short Rows, 5 June 2022. https://www.aghistorysociety.org/ahs-blog/huegel-a-fresh-perspective-on-the-bomb
Figure 1: Aerial view of the Feed Materials Production Center. Courtesy of the U.S. Department of Energy.
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) recently predicted an increase in nuclear stockpiles over the following decade as the world’s nuclear powers—including the United States, Russia, United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea—expand or modernize their arsenals.[1] Fueled by the violence in Ukraine, including Russia’s threats to use nuclear weapons, nuclear stockpiling has national security experts on edge. According to journalist Eric Schlosser, “the risk of nuclear war is greater today than at any other time since the Cuban missile crisis.”[2] As international tensions recall nightmares of the Cold War, it is timely to reflect on the vital place of rural Americans in helping end the nuclear arms race.
Diplomacy played a critical role in disarmament, including Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev’s well-known summits: Geneva in 1985, Reykjavik in 1986, and Washington, D.C. in 1987, which culminated in the signing of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty on December 8, 1987, the first arms control agreement to eliminate an entire class of nuclear weapons.[3] As did the peace movement, whose reawakening in the late-1970s and early-1980s helped the world imagine life beyond the shadow of the nuclear arms race. In the United States, Randall Forsberg’s Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign led this resurgence, including the New York City Freeze rally on June 12, 1982, the largest antinuclear protest in American history.[4] Jonathan Schell’s book The Fate of the Earth, director Nicholas Meyer’s made for TV film The Day After, and activist-scientist Carl Sagan’s “nuclear winter” hypothesis also resurrected the bomb in popular culture.[5]
But political elites and doomsday images only tell part of the story. As my recent dissertation demonstrates, grassroots environmental activism has played an unheralded role in contesting the nuclear arms race in the rural Midwest.[6] During the 1980s, reporting on contamination at nuclear weapons production facilities across the country pieced together a disturbing picture; decades of shortsighted dumping of radioactive wastes by the Department of Energy (DOE) and its predecessor agencies had created a national environmental crisis which threatened public health.[7] These stories, including a highly publicized uranium leak at the Feed Materials Production Center in Southwest Ohio, launched a locally focused but nationally connected grassroots movement which transformed DOE’s culture of production with the values of the environmental movement. From this perspective, the slowdown of the nuclear arms race during the 1980s and early 1990s had more to do with the “slow violence” of nuclear waste than the apocalyptic threat of nuclear war.[8]
Figure 2: Dairy cows grazing at Fernald with the Purina-esque red and white checkerboard water tower in the background, 1965. Courtesy of the U.S. Department of Energy.
This history begins in rural Crosby Township on the outskirts of Cincinnati, Ohio. During the early 1950s, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) seized local farmland in the area to construct the Feed Materials Production Center, better known as Fernald for the small community of the same name, as part of a national industrial buildup to increase America’s nuclear weapons production capacity. Fernald’s mission was producing uranium metal products, or “feed materials,” for the AEC’s plutonium production reactors in Hanford, Washington, and Savannah River, South Carolina.[9]Like today, this historical moment felt unstable. In 1949 the Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb, which caught the American intelligence community off guard and broke a short-lived monopoly on nuclear weapons. The United States, as a result, pressed forward with a program to develop the next generation of its nuclear arsenal: the hydrogen bomb. The nuclear arms race was on.[10]
As decades passed, greater Cincinnati largely forgot about Fernald despite its vital Cold War mission. While longtime area residents remembered Fernald as the “atomic plant,” some new arrivals confused Fernald’s red and white checkerboard water tower for the Purina company’s logo or assumed that “feed materials” meant agricultural feed.[11]This all changed on December 11, 1984, when the Cincinnati Enquirer reported that hundreds of pounds of uranium dust had potentially escaped from Fernald into the environment.[12] Fernald’s uranium leak, however, was not a singular catastrophic event. It was more accurately a series of failures in outdated equipment, inadequate oversight, communication breakdowns, and, most importantly, the goal of production trumping environmental health and safety. The leak occurred in the Plant 9, or Special Products Plant, dust collector, which failed from September to November 1984 as Fernald’s operating contractor, National Lead of Ohio (NLO), ignored the environmental risks to meet DOE’s increased production demands for the Reagan administration’s renewed nuclear arms race, which had recently forced the aged plant into 24/7 operations.[13]
Figure 3: The failed Plant 9 dust collector, c. 1985. Courtesy of the U.S. Department of Energy.
Two days later, DOE representatives from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, reported to Ohio to host a public meeting on the uranium leak. Hundreds of the plant’s workers and neighbors crammed into the Crosby Elementary School gymnasium, which was located only about a mile from the plant, a location that no doubt fueled the anxiety of parents in attendance. At this meeting, NLO and DOE managers admitted to releasing about 275 pounds of uranium from the plant but brushed aside the community’s fears about the contamination.[14] This decision would backfire. Kathy Meyer, a nurse and mother of two, spoke on behalf of many angry parents that night. Meyer said, “I am concerned for them and for their 230 classmates that are out playing every day just two blocks from Fernald.”[15] After speaking, the DOE representatives put Meyer on the spot and asked if she would serve as a liaison between Fernald and its neighbors. Faced with this split-second decision, Meyer agreed, and a community environmental movement was born.[16]
In the following weeks, Meyer and her husband Don, an attorney, organized Fernald Residents for Environmental Safety and Health (FRESH) to hold the DOE accountable for the radioactive wastes dumped in their backyard. FRESH was formed with Fernald workers and community activists at the table. Throughout its existence, FRESH was consistently sensitive to the interests of organized labor, arguing for the cleanup but never the closure of the plant. This careful positioning as mothers working on environmental issues and the health of the local community was instrumental in securing FRESH’s key political ally: Ohio Senator John Glenn. Glenn was a longtime supporter of Ohio’s nuclear weapons industry, but also took issues of environmental health and safety seriously. On April 22, 1985, the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs hosted a hearing at Cincinnati City Hall to explore radioactive contamination at Fernald. Testimony from FRESH, Fernald Atomic Trades and Labor Council (FATLC), Ohio EPA, and political allies Senator Glenn, Congressman Tom Luken, and Ohio Attorney General Anthony Celebrezze Jr., realized a statewide movement to green Fernald and DOE’s nuclear weapons production complex.[17]
Few individuals had their lives as transformed by the events at Fernald as did Lisa Crawford, who took over as FRESH’s president when Meyer stepped away to have her third child. Shortly after the uranium leak, Crawford—whose family rented a farmhouse across the street from the plant—learned that her family’s well water was contaminated with uranium. This experience, according to Crawford, transformed her from “a nice quiet little housewife” into a “wild person.”[18] Crawford dedicated her life to grassroots environmental activism and led FRESH to national significance. She filed a class action lawsuit against the DOE and NLO, which came to represent 14,000 people who lived within a five-mile radius of the plant and settled for $73 million for emotional distress, diminished property values, and the development of a medical monitoring program. FRESH was also a founding member of the Military Production Network (MPN), a coalition of national peace and environmental groups and grassroots activists from nuclear weapons production communities.[19] Their collective activism transformed the polarized national dialogue on nuclear weapons into a conversation about environmental health and safety.
Figure 4: FRESH activist Lisa Crawford touring Fernald with vice presidential candidate Al Gore, 1992. Courtesy of the U.S. Department of Energy.
For self-described “country folk” like Marvin Clawson, the tidal wave of media attention—including his family’s picture on the cover of Time Magazine—was a surreal experience. But after touring Fernald with FRESH, Clawson, a General Motors toolmaker, was even more shocked at the plant’s “crude operation.”[20] The DOE responded immediately to these concerns, first by firing NLO and recruiting Westinghouse to take over the plant. In 1985, Secretary of Energy John Herrington announced a national survey of environmental health and safety issues at the DOE’s nuclear weapons production sites, beginning with Fernald. In the department’s 1986 budget, the DOE more than doubled its environmental health and safety spending from $40 to $100 million, with Fernald receiving $21.5 million for plant upgrades. Over the next few years, grassroots environmental activism redrew the map of nuclear weapons production as the DOE downsized and modernized the complex. On August 23, 1991, the DOE formally announced Fernald’s transition from production to cleanup. Under pressure from environmentalists, Congress passed the Federal Facilities Compliance Act of 1992, which brought the DOE’s nuclear weapons production plants into environmental compliance.[21] By 1994, with an annual cleanup budget of more than six billion dollars, the DOE was directing the largest nuclear remediation program in the world.[22] The department’s transition from production to environmental management was underway.
Figure 5: Rusted drums of radioactive mixed wastes outside of Plant 1. Drum storage was a major compliance issue at Fernald and many required repackaging. Courtesy of the U.S. Department of Energy.
Today, the Feed Materials Production Center is the Fernald Preserve, a 1,050-acre park with seven miles of hiking trails through native grasslands, man-made wetlands, upland forests, and a riparian corridor. Over 250 species of birds have been identified at the site.[23] Gone are Fernald’s nine production plants, but some of its radioactive legacy remains in the On-site Waste Disposal Facility as well as in the Great Miami Aquifer, which the DOE continues to pump-and-treat for uranium contamination. During the early 1990s, the Fernald Citizens Task Force, an advisory board of activists, workers, academics, and community leaders, agreed to retain these low-level radioactive wastes onsite. Citizens have maintained a close watch, however, and the DOE has followed through on its promise to monitor the site in collaboration with the community.[24] The Fernald Preserve is now a local source of pride and a refuge for wildlife.
During the twentieth century, environmental activism had a profound ability to transform the nuclear arms race. This began with the signing of the Limited Test Ban Treaty in 1963, which dramatically lowered the release of nuclear fallout into the atmosphere, and peaked with Fernald’s movement to clean up the DOE’s nuclear weapons production complex in the 1980s and 1990s, which became a national model for community participation in mitigating the Cold War’s legacy of radioactive waste. [25] As a shared resource, the environment offers common ground for even the most difficult political challenges, including disarmament. “The Fernald Preserve is an amazing place,” said Lisa Crawford. “I see how this site has grown, changed, and healed itself and we did it all together.”[26] The next step in the greening of the bomb is uncertain, but if history serves as a guide, the result will be a more secure and less radioactive world for all.
Figure 6: A 12-acre wetland at the Fernald Preserve. This former pasture was replanted with over 3,000 trees and shrubs and thirty species of native plants, 2013. Courtesy of the U.S. Department of Energy.
Citations
[1] “Global nuclear arsenals are expected to grow as states continue to modernize—New SIPRI Yearbook out now,” Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), June 13, 2022, Global nuclear arsenals are expected to grow as states continue to modernize–New SIPRI Yearbook out now | SIPRI.
[2] Eric Schlosser, “What if Russia Uses Nuclear Weapons in Ukraine?,” The Atlantic, June 20, 2022, What If Russia Uses Nuclear Weapons in Ukraine? - The Atlantic.
[3] Lawrence S. Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1971 to the Present (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 388-401; Richard Rhodes, Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race (New York: Vintage Books, 2007), 275-276.
[4] Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition, 253-267; Allan M. Winkler, Life Under a Cloud: American Anxiety About the Atom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 201-203; William M. Knoblauch, Nuclear Freeze in a Cold War: The Reagan Administration, Cultural Activism, and the End of the Arms Race (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2017), 23-24.
[5] Knoblauch, Nuclear Freeze in a Cold War, 8.
[6] Casey Huegel, “Fernald and the Transformation of Environmental Activism: The Grassroots Movement to Make America Safe from Nuclear Weapons Production,” PhD Diss. (University of Cincinnati, 2022).
[7] Terrence R. Fehner and F.G. Gosling, “Coming in From the Cold: Regulating U.S. Department of Energy Nuclear Facilities, 1942-1996,” Environmental History 1, no. 2 (Apr. 1996): 16-22.
[8] For “slow violence,” see Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011), 2-3.
[9] Michael Joshua Silverman, “No Immediate Risk: Environmental Safety in Nuclear Weapons Production, 1942-1985,” PhD diss. (Carnegie Mellon University, 2000), 291-292; Richard G. Hewlett and Francis Duncan, Atomic Shield: A History of the Atomic Energy Commission, v. II, 1947-1952(Washington D.C.: U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, 1972), 586-587; U.S. Senate, Management and Operation of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fernald, OH, Feed Materials Production Center, 99th Congress, First Session, April 22, 1985, Cincinnati, Ohio, 8.
[10] Michael D. Gordin, Red Cloud at Dawn: Truman, Stalin, and the End of the Atomic Monopoly (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2009), 12-13, 263-268.
[11] First Link: The Story of Fernald, directed by Joyce Bentle (Fernald: Flour Fernald, 2001).
[12] Silverman, “No Immediate Risk,” 358-359.
[13] Huegel, “Fernald and the Transformation of Environmental Activism,” 52-56.
[14] Silverman, “No Immediate Risk,” 359-361.
[15] Meyer is quoted in “Anger Vented,” The Cincinnati Post, December 14, 1984, 12B.
[16] Huegel, “Fernald and the Transformation of Environmental Activism,” 58.
[17] Ibid., 65-73, 75-80.
[18] Lisa Crawford, interview with Fernald Living History Project, August 17, 1999, p. 8, http://www.fernaldcommunityalliance.org/FLHPinterviews/CrawfordLisa.pdf, accessed June 20, 2022.
[19] Huegel, “Fernald and the Transformation of Environmental Activism,” 74, 123-128, 153-161.
[20] Marvin Clawson, interview with Fernald Living History Project, August 24, 1999, p. 7-8, 12-13, http://www.fernaldcommunityalliance.org/FLHPinterviews/Clawson.pdf, accessed June 27, 2022.
[21] Huegel, “Fernald and the Transformation of Environmental Activism,” 62-64, 81-82, 92, 142, 186, 194-196.
[22] Terrence R. Fehner and F.G. Gosling, “Coming in From the Cold: Regulating U.S. Department of Energy Nuclear Facilities, 1942-1996” in Environmental History 1, no. 2 (Apr. 1996), 6.
[23] “Fernald Fact Sheet,” U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Legacy Management, Site Fact Sheet (energy.gov), accessed June 21, 2022.
[24] Huegel, “Fernald and the Transformation of Environmental Activism,” 198-218.
[25] For an international history of nuclear fallout, see Toshihiro Higuchi, Political Fallout: Nuclear Weapons Testing and the Making of a Global Environmental Crisis (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2020); Fernald became a proving ground for remediation technologies as well as a model for community participation in the DOE’s cleanup program. See Huegel, “Fernald and the Transformation of Environmental Activism,” 180-218.
[26] “A Decade of Difference at Fernald,” Office of Legacy Management, U.S. Department of Energy, January 18, 2017, A Decade of Difference at Fernald | Department of Energy, accessed June 27, 2022.