Reassessing Nuclear Energy in the Shadow of Toxicity Discourses

In the third episode of the first season of The Simpsons (1989-), Bart and his classmates visit Homer's workplace, the Springfield nuclear power plant. What follows in this episode and, sporadically in the series is a pastiche that reflects our collective cultural anxiety about nuclear energy. These include loose safety regulations, three-eyed fish living in nuclear pools, a blasé attitude toward nuclear waste, and the feeling that we are on the precipice of an impending meltdown. While explored in a jocular tone, The Simpsons illustrates an attitude to nuclear energy that is mired in discourses of toxicity. Toxicity discourses reflect the sentiment that the contaminating by-products of industrialization and scientific progress are causing environmental hazards and personal harm. Within the confines of civilian energy, only nuclear power carries a legacy of fear-inducing toxicity, which often gets more cultural attention than the pollution emanating from fossil-fueled power plants. This article explores how toxicity discourses attach to nuclear energy and radiation so effectively and why they produce such acute fear for so many.

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For the communications scholar William Kinsella, there are four themes of nuclear discourse concerning environmental communication: mystery, secrecy, potency, and entelechy. I propose a fifth: toxicity. Toxicity reflects how radioactivity engenders nuclear energy with a unique quality of inducing terror. Since its inception, the invisible yet potent nature of radiation has captured the imagination of the public and instilled anxiety. After the discovery of radiation in 1896, it wasn't long before radiophobia was a pervasive feeling, with newspapers publishing countless stories of people developing skin burns after trying out new X-ray machines. Scientists were peddled as Davids tried to wrestle a radioactive Goliath into submission. Ionizing radiation proved extremely dangerous, killing radiophysicist pioneer Marie Curie and many who were exposed to it, including 30 of the Radium Girls, a group of female wartime factory workers who built watches using radium dials for luminescence. 

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After World War 2 and the beginning of the Cold War, popular discourse became inundated with imagery of potential nuclear fallout. In North America, this was presented in an array of government films and pamphlets as part of the civil defense strategy to prepare citizens for nuclear war. As well, John Hersey’s 1946 exposé on the bombing of Hiroshima for The New Yorker illuminated the West to the horrifying impact of a nuclear bomb and radiation poisoning. The effects of radioactivity were also explored in films of this period through radioactive monsters (Godzilla, 1954; Them!, 1954) and nuclear war (Dr Strangelove, 1964; Fail Safe, 1964). Outside of film, radiation poisoning from nuclear weapons was experienced via domestic testing. A particularly devastating H-bomb test by the United States contaminated the food supply and left radiation burns on the residents of the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. On U.S. soil, a nuclear bomb test irradiated the cast of The Conqueror (1956), a biopic about Genghis Khan (crudely portrayed by John Wayne), which was shot in the Nevada desert, downwind from a highly active nuclear test site. Civilian energy exists on the back of this discursive reality, and in the late 1960s, nuclear reactors began proliferating on a global scale. 

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Radiation, both evocative and enigmatic, inherently invokes fear. However, the existence of radiation within the parameters of a civilian nuclear reactor made radioactive leakage a tangible reality for many people. The 1973-74 oil embargo reshuffled energy priorities worldwide, prompting nations to seek alternatives that could ensure energy security and reduce costs. Nuclear energy quickly emerged as a popular alternative energy source, stirring unease among the public and a cohort of nascent environmentalists. This movement, in large part, was formed on the basis that in the fight for a clean environment, public enemy number one is human-caused toxic contamination by way of large-scale industrialization. Catastrophic events like the Santa Barbara oil spill and chemical fire in the Cuyahoga River in 1969 solidified the idea that high technological modernity came at the cost of environmental protection. As American biologist Rachel Carson wrote in her seminal book Silent Spring (1962), radiation no longer referred to a unit of life-giving sun rays, but rather to the consequences of tampering with the atom. The first Earth Day in 1970 kicked off a host of public demonstrations and, within the nuclear energy sector, created a culture of protest and occupation. Proposed nuclear sites around the world were overrun by farmers, local citizens, anti-nuke activists, and environmentalists united in their concern about potential radiation leaching into the local environment.  

The world was beginning to wake up to the protests at potential nuclear energy sites raising concerns about local biodiversity and pollution. Three notable examples of nuclear reactor sites that hosted intense protests were Diablo Canyon, California, in the 1980s and the 1970s proposed power plants in Nova Scotia and Whyle, West Germany. Protests successfully deterred the Nova Scotian and the West German power plants, citing protection of the local environment as the main reason. However, Diablo Canyon came online in 1985 and continues to produce clean energy for California today.  In contrast, as recently as 2018, Nova Scotia produced over 55 percent of its energy from coal, the highest rate in Canada. 

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In California, a 2003 study found that 20 years on, outside of the effect of cooling systems threatening a population of abalones, the reactor’s impact on local coastal biodiversity was a net positive, mainly due to the lack of human activity in the area. The research on coal power plants is harrowing, as the emanating particulate matter pollutes the environment and leads to heightened rates of bronchitis, asthma, and anemia. Here in my home city of Toronto, Ontario, the number of smog days per year counted down to zero by 2014, partially due to the coal power phaseout. 

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Beyond the public health risk, the environmental impact is not limited to air pollution. Physicist Spencer Weart claims that in the early 1970s, the mining of coal displaced acres of land with polluted waterways and landscapes; the subsequent ash produced is dumped into landfills. Compared to the tightly regulated mining and disposal of uranium, coal power still is nothing short of an environmental and health disaster. In Germany, despite a respectable nuclear energy fleet, the country began a complete nuclear phase-out in 2011. This was in reaction to the Fukushima meltdown, and replaced clean kilowatt hours of nuclear energy with fossil fuels, resulting in an estimated economic cost of 12 billion dollars per year, 70% attributable to increased mortality associated with air pollution.

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It isn’t all rosy, however. In 1979, a loss of coolant led to the meltdown of the Unit 2 reactor at Three Mile Island in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, releasing radioactive byproducts that eerily echoed the plot of The China Syndrome (1979), which had just been released in theaters. The media jumped at the opportunity, touting nuclear terror and referencing the foreshadowing prowess of the film. Between 1979 and 1988, 67 nuclear power projects were canceled, with the 1986 Chernobyl disaster representing the apex of nuclear fear. Only 30 people died from the initial meltdown at the Chernobyl power plant, however, hundreds of thousands are said to have felt knock-on effects such as deadly cancer diagnoses. In 2011, a devastating earthquake and tsunami triggered a meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear plant. Again, direct casualties from the meltdown itself were extremely low, but the future effects of the release of radiation into the atmosphere are still under research and are likely devastating. 

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This is to say in many cases, the communication and representation about the harm of radiation impacted the implementation of nuclear energy as much as major meltdowns, concerns about economic costs, and the problem of nuclear waste. Popular discourse is inundated with dramatized depictions of the result of nuclear toxicity in shows like Chernobyl (2019), Fallout (2024), and the Oscar-winning film Oppenheimer (2023). As much of the world is beginning to once again embrace nuclear energy, with up to 28 nations having some semblance of plans to construct new nuclear reactors, it is salient to ask whether the risk of global warming now outweighs the fear of potential nuclear contamination. Additionally, why is fossil fuel pollution still not as reviled as ionizing radiation? The hand-wringing over the future of nuclear power is often louder than the effort to decarbonize energy systems and shut down fossil fuel energy production. Perhaps our collective perception may have differed if Homer Simpson worked at a fossil fuel power station. We cannot ignore the history of nuclear accidents, but we must have a deeper conversation about our understanding of the dangers of ionizing radiation and the expansion of civilian nuclear energy across the world being curtailed partially due to toxicity discourses.