by Michael Shellenberger

In the 1970s, air pollution in Ohio’s cities was so bad that people had to turn on their car headlights during the day to see through the smoke.

On particularly bad days, people had to brush soot off their cars, and re-wash clothes they had hung out to dry.

Everybody agreed something had to be done, and so Ohio’s electric utilities sought to build eight reactors across four different nuclear power plants, which do not emit harmful air pollution.

The people of Ohio knew they needed nuclear power if they wanted cleaner air. At a 1970 public hearing for the Beaver Valley plant, the initial uneasiness gave way to support.

“People just aren’t afraid of atomic energy anymore,” a gas station attendant told the Pittsburgh Press afterwards.

But not everybody felt that building nuclear plants should be up to the people of Ohio.

Nader Knows Best

Ralph Nader, who became an international celebrity in 1965, campaigned in Ohio against its nuclear plants in 1971.

"A nuclear accident could wipe out Cleveland and the survivors would envy the dead," Nader told the Akron Beacon on October 15, 1974.