Related article:
The coming nuclear renaissance

"Thirty years ago this month, an accident at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania inflamed public opposition to nuclear power. The mishap - a loss of coolant that caused the reactor core to overheat - caused no known deaths or diseases, and it exposed area residents to only a negligible amount of radiation. But it fueled an antinuclear frenzy that soon brought the expansion of the industry to a halt.

Dozens of planned reactors were canceled. In the years since Three Mile Island, not a single nuclear plant has been ordered and built in the United States."

nuclear_renaissance

Linked from Instapundit

I don't know if it's as simple as the incident at Three Mile Island plant, but I guess it makes good copy.

Some other interesting points in article:

"According to a new Gallup poll, 59 percent of Americans favor nuclear energy - a new high - and 27 percent say they strongly favor it. The attitude is bipartisan, with majorities of both Republicans and Democrats supporting nuclear power."

And:

"While Obama has said little about nuclear power since becoming president, his energy secretary has been unequivocal. "The nuclear industry has to be part of our energy mix," physicist Steven Chu said during his confirmation hearings. "It's 20 percent of our [total] electricity production today, but it's 70 percent of the carbon-free electricity we produce." "

This is a little misleading:
"To many environmentalists alarmed about global warming, nuclear power has an irresistible appeal: It releases no greenhouse gases. Indeed - another irony - nuclear power plants don't even release as much radiation as coal-fired plants, since coal ash is more radioactive than nuclear waste."

But at least they provided a link which explains what is meant:
Which at the linked article it better said as:

"a by-product from burning coal for electricity—carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy. * [See Editor's Note at end of page 2]"
SciAm.com

Which includes:
"As a general clarification, ounce for ounce, coal ash released from a power plant delivers more radiation than nuclear waste shielded via water or dry cask storage."

And article basically explains that radiation from coal generation is not a particularly significant risk, but the point really, is that nuclear reactors result in emission of a very tiny amount of radiation.
Though coal electric energy production in the US is much more than nuclear energy, so actually the total radiation produce is not just 100 times but a few hundred times. Or if you want to reduce the amount radiation produced by human activity, one should have nuclear reactors instead of coal power plants.