What ‘The Simpsons’ gets right (but mostly wrong!) about nuclear

No three-eyed fish here!

This article originally appeared in the Spring 2025 issue of Thinking Minnesota magazine.

Homer Simpson, patriarch of the Simpson family and the eponymous, long-running animated sitcom “The Simpsons,” is the ineffective safety inspector in Sector 7G of Springfield’s nuclear power plant. The main villain is billionaire nuclear plant owner Mr. Burns. Since the show premiered in 1989, it has poked fun at, and reinforced, the public’s fears about nuclear power.

How does “The Simpsons” stack up today? It got some things right — but nuclear power plants are cleaner and safer than “The Simpsons” lets on.

RIGHT: Nuclear power is the cleanest energy source.

The writers of “The Simpsons” probably meant it facetiously, but in Season 2, Episode 7 (“Bart vs. Thanksgiving”), Homer says grace before his family’s Thanksgiving meal:

And, Lord, we’re especially thankful for nuclear power, the cleanest, safest energy source there is. . . except for solar, which is just a pipe dream.

Homer is right! Nuclear power emits no carbon dioxide. Long operational lifetimes of 40 to 60 years, and sometimes up to 80, mean that oil, natural gas, or coal used to construct, mine, process fuel, maintain, or decommission the plant is put to good use. For context, wind turbines and solar panels operate for about 20 years and often repower before then.

BONUS POINTS: Solar is still a pipe dream.

System-wide costs like load balancing, overbuilding, curtailment, transmission lines, and battery storage raise the cost of new solar facilities and make the technology uneconomic without substantial tax breaks and subsidies. In American Experiment’s modeling of Minnesota’s clean electricity by 2040 mandate, all-in costs raise new solar construction to $472 per megawatt-hour (MWh). Nuclear power costs $37 per MWh.

RIGHT: Nuclear power is the safest energy source, too.

In Season 2, Episode 15 (“Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?”), Homer leads the family in grace:

And we thank you Lord, for nuclear power, which has yet to cause one fatality, at least in this country.

No industry is immune to accidents, but the U.S. has never seen a civilian fatality due to a nuclear meltdown. Three military personnel lost their lives in the 1961 SL-1 reactor accident at Idaho’s National Reactor Testing Station.

“The Simpsons” premiered 10 years after the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 and three years after the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. After the Three Mile Island accident, radiation levels for nearby residents rose by less than a sixth of the radiation dose of a basic chest x-ray. In its fact sheet, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) found “the actual release had negligible effects on the physical health of individuals or the environment.”

The 2011 Fukushima Daiichi accident occurred after a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami caused three reactors to lose cooling. The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) determined that there were no deaths or cases of radiation sickness from Fukushima.

The U.S. learned from Three Mile Island. Nuclear power is subject to stringent regulations and oversight by the NRC, with many layers of redundancy to prevent accidents.

WRONG: Nuclear power plants are run by negligent employees like Homer Simpson.

In Season 3, Episode 5 (“Homer Defined”), Homer averts a meltdown at the Springfield plant by accident, then saves the day again for the neighboring town of Shelbyville.

Fortunately, the NRC requires that no fewer than two people (a supervisor and a reactor operator) always be present during a reactor’s operation. All individuals must also be licensed by the NRC. Many positions at nuclear power plants require at least an associate’s degree or equivalent training in the U.S. military.

WRONG: Nuclear waste is disposed of haphazardly and causes mutations!

No article about “The Simpsons” would be complete without mentioning Season 2, Episode 4 (“Two Cars in Every Garage and Three Eyes on Every Fish”), in which Bart catches a three-eyed fish in a river downstream of the plant. Mr. Burns attempts to bribe an inspector to overlook 342 code violations, but when that fails, he runs for governor. Blinky, as Mr. Burns named the fish, quickly derails his campaign when Marge serves the fish for a televised dinner.

According to the NRC, a person living within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant receives an average radiation dose of about 0.01 millirem per year. The average American receives 300 millirem per year from natural background sources of radiation. That’s a small practical risk — and vanishingly unlikely to create a Blinky.

The radioactivity of nuclear waste decays over time, and power plants store used fuels on-site. Used fuel cools in a deep pool for five years, blocking radiation, before being stored in a concrete and steel cask. Nuclear waste is so energy-dense that the entire amount of waste created in the U.S. to date would fill a single football field 10 yards deep. About 97 percent of used fuel can be reprocessed and recycled for reuse.

RIGHT: Springfield’s nuclear reactors have been providing the town with affordable, reliable, and zero-emissions power for 36 years.

The Simpsons family experimented with renewable energy when they installed an at-home wind turbine in Season 21, Episode 19 (“The Squirt and the Whale”). After disconnecting from the grid, Homer declares: “From now on, the Simpsons are living… intermittently!”

Luckily, the Springfield Nuclear Plant means that the Simpsons don’t have to depend on the wind blowing and the sun shining to get the electricity they need. Safe, reliable, and zero-emissions power is right there in town.