Behind the man who researched Midland’s nuclear plant efforts

Smith has penned book about failed effort

DAVE SHANE

For the Daily News

When Lee Smith of Midland began to wind down his career in the energy business, he ran into a snag.

It wasn’t the kind of snag a retiree gets when fishing from a river bank or tying up a backyard hammock. Smith, a trained geologist and oil and gas trader who worked for many years at the Midland Cogeneration Venture (MCV), stumbled onto the history of the Midland Nuclear Plant.

A twin-reactor nuclear plant was under construction at the current location of MCV, not far from Whiting Overlook Park on the city’s south side. Consumers Energy, which was called Consumers Power Co. at that time, announced plans for the plant in late 1967, and said it would take several years of construction and cost $267 million.

But 17 years and $4.1 billion later, the energy giant gave up on the nuclear plant, which was 85% complete. It was a story of mistakes, miscalculations and errors that gnawed at Smith.

In 2016 Smith, who was 75 years old at the time and working as a consultant, was attending an energy conference at Michigan State University. A lecturer mentioned that the Midland Nuclear Plant was built on top of a giant peat bog, and that’s what in part led to its failure.

That remark would change Smith’s life. He decided he needed to know more. “It always gnawed at me how they could have screwed this up,” he told the Daily News in a recent interview.

Smith spent much of the next five years researching the failed nuclear plant and eventually writing a book about it. Now 80 years old, his 183-page book “Nearly Nuclear: A Mismanaged Energy Transition” by LeRoy Smith has been published by Michigan State University Press.

Smith wasn’t planning on writing a book when he started his research. He was just curious, and looking for answers. He submitted a few articles to the Midland Daily News for publication and also included its history during his occasional lectures.

“I would give a talk, and people would say to me later, ‘You really ought to write a book about that.’ … and by that time, I had collected so much stuff.”

He said he knew it wasn’t going to be a big moneymaker.

“No, I never thought I’d make any money at all,” Smith said. “But once I got into it, I couldn’t put it down.”

In 2018, he began working toward compiling his information into a book, in a process that took him about three years. In 2020, he signed a contract with MSU Press to have his work published. It became available to purchase through Amazon and Barnes and Noble in September of this year.

Smith tells of the local support for the plant in its beginnings, as it was expected to provide energy for The Dow Chemical Co. as well as thousands of Michigan dwellings. The community hosted one of its largest public gatherings in history in a rally for nuclear energy on Oct. 12, 1971. Hollywood personality Art Linkletter was the featured guest.

But in 1979, the Three Mile Island nuclear accident — the worst in U.S. commercial history — rocked the atomic energy world, and people began questioning its long-term viability. That same year, a fictitious Academy Award-nominated movie about a nuclear plant accident, “The China Syndrome,” added fuel to the debate.

Environmentalists were already questioning the safety of the Midland project, which was built on poorly compacted soil in a flood plain. Two of its main structures were sinking, and cracks had developed in its containment buildings.

Lee Smith

The plant was canceled in July 1984 when Consumers could no longer get financing to continue the project. the players involved in the scenario. There were the industrial giants — builder Bechtel Corp. (the largest construction company in the nation), Consumers Power and Dow. And there were local business leaders whose steering committee was led by the Rev. Wayne North of Midland First United Methodist Church.

There also were the environmentalists, led by Mary Sinclair of Midland, a “housewife” who Smith sees as one of the pioneer female activists of her kind in the world, and a 30-year-old liberal journalist Michael Moore of Flint, who later became a major filmmaker.

Nearly Nuclear book cover

“License” available to sign at the Speak Up Now rally to show support for the Midland Plant. After the rally, this sign was taken to Washington with 15,000 signatures. (File photo/Midland Daily News)

“It’s about Midland, the people of Midland and how they reacted to this plant being built,” Smith said. “Everybody believed they were doing the right thing for Midland.”

Smith said he felt it was important to write the history of the plant.

“There are some real business management lessons in it, … a case study of an unsuccessful effort. … Time and time again, (Consumers) made mistakes,” he said. “I knew it before, but I was impressed by how November 2021 | Senior Scope complicated things were, the mix of people and the outside events that affected it.”

While Sinclair was reviled by some in the local community — spat on in public and her husband’s law office shunned — she received national attention for the relentless pursuit of her cause. She was featured on a segment of the CBS news program 60 Minutes in 1985.

“Mary Sinclair is a truly remarkable woman,” Smith said. “She was a pioneer environmentalist. … She is a wonderful example of what a woman could do in a world where women answered to their husband’s names.”

The shell of the nuclear plant eventually transformed into Midland Cogeneration Venture, a large, successful natural gas-fired power plant that began operating in 1991.

“Had the plant not failed, I wouldn’t have had a job here,” Smith said. He admits writing a non-fiction book is not the type of project for the faint of heart to take on in retirement. And he received plenty of assistance from his wife, H.J. Smith, a former Jefferson Middle School English teacher.

“It’s exciting to get it done. I worked on it a long time,” he said. “I would only recommend it to somebody who felt extremely interested in a topic and was willing to devote a large amount of time to it. … It consumes you.”