Nuclear energy is haunted by a legacy of fear and toxicity that fossil fuels seem to escape. In this piece, Jackson Ainsworth asks why. While nuclear disasters dominate cultural memory, fossil fuels—despite their clear environmental destruction—rarely provoke the same visceral reactions. Ainsworth dissects how media and history have cemented nuclear’s toxic image and challenges why fossil fuel pollution isn’t met with the same alarm. Why has toxicity discourse attached so strongly to nuclear power, but not to fossil fuels?