Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All

by Michael Shellenberger

Few individuals did more to frighten the public about nuclear energy than the actress Jane Fonda. She starred in the anti-nuclear disaster film, The China Syndrome, and provided the leadership to get it made. In the film, a scientist famously claims that an accident at a nuclear plant “could render an area the size of the state of Pennsylvania permanently uninhabitable.” The Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania had an accident twelve days after the film’s premier.87 It would be difficult to exaggerate Hollywood’s role in turning the public against nuclear energy. Nuclear is the go-to scary technology for makers of films and television, and not just the bombs, nor even just the power plants, but even the largely harmless used fuel rods. By the early 1990s, the television show The Simpsons depicted nuclear waste as a green sludge leaking from drums. In a 1990 episode, Lisa and Bart catch a three-eyed fish from the river near the nuclear plant.