Ancient Web: Jim Zim Took a Nuclear Plant's Photo Tour From the Mailroom

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.

A nuclear power plant is not an easy place to visit casually. Jim Zimmerlin built a personal photo essay out of the privilege of working at one for twenty-eight years.

Read Jim Zim's Diablo Canyon photo tour

Jim Zimmerlin, who signs himself Jim Zim, says he joined Pacific Gas & Electric at the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in 1992 and retired in June 2020. The page combines photographs of the coastal station with stories about the decidedly non-glamorous jobs that keep industrial infrastructure running.

His first position was in the mailroom. Later he conducted fire inspections, made signs, helped a welding crew, operated the switchboard, maintained a document library, and worked in housekeeping. After years elsewhere, he returned to the mailroom because he liked meeting people.

The daily life behind an engineering icon

The most vivid anecdote concerns a steam generator inspection. Zimmerlin describes training in a mock-up, entering through a roughly sixteen-inch opening, wearing a pressurized protective suit, and spending only about thirty seconds inside a vessel where radiation exposure limited work time.

He illustrates that story with workplace photographs and identifies which images came from PG&E rather than from his own camera. Another section describes seeing a removed steam generator hauled away during replacement work, then being warned not to stand too close to equipment he once had to crawl inside.

The webpage also makes emphatic claims about plant safety, earthquake engineering, cooling-water reservoirs, and Fukushima. Those are the former employee's explanations and judgments, not an independent nuclear safety assessment. His claim that an equivalent disaster would be impossible should not be treated as a verified conclusion.

What is unquestionably preserved is a view into the workplace from an employee whose job changed repeatedly as staffing and procedures evolved. There are photographs of signs, buildings, access roads, a mailroom, and the hills surrounding the site.

The broader JimZim homepage links to more than a hundred pages about photography, travel, trains, cruise ships, and family memories. The Diablo Canyon essay belongs to that personal-web tradition, though its current wording includes the author's 2020 retirement and cannot be presented as an untouched 1990s document.

A plant can have official histories and engineering reports. It rarely has an official history of the person who made the labels.

Explore Zimmerlin's original workplace photographs and recollections.

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.