I don't buy this because we could have easily kept on building nuclear power plants. There was temporarily an energy shock, but the long-term issue is insufficient demand not (energy) supply.
I think the problem with nuclear energy is that it requires prior investment and return on investment is a little bit long(more than 4 years) and doesn't create enough jobs to be a sexy political option.
Then a Chernobyl would only bankrupt households and not a bunch of countries. It would be like healthcare in the United States. Families would go bankrupt since their reactor faces problems :)