We could make movies about dams that collapse, too and we have. I'm not even sure there are more about nuclear accidents (nuclear war, yes, but accidents?). Even if there are, I think the movies are a symptom of the problem, not its cause. The invisible danger of radiation being held back by walls of concrete just looks more dangerous to us than the visible danger of a wall of water being held back by walls of concrete.
And Chernobyl? A nature reserve. I can see someone writing a SF story about cultures that protect existing nature by the controlled disposal of radio-active material.
1. It's out-of-the-ordinary. Nobody would pay attention to the monthly news report that coal burning has, yet again, damaged the environment to the same degree as a meltdown.
2. Our monkey brains are incredibly bad at realizing that gases can be more dangerous than those scary barrels with scary warning symbols. Instead of being hidden away underground, gasses conveniently "disappear" into the air.
The only two Level 7 nuclear events in the world — Chernobyl and Fukushima Daiichi — have have rendered large swaths of land unusable for a significant amount of time. Whether or not the exclusion zones surrounding these two areas need to be as large as they are can be argued. However, when a hydroelectric dam fails more people die initially, but as the cleanup happens and the reporters fade away, the event fades into the background. With nuclear incidents people are persistently reminded whether through apocalyptic movies or people going into the exclusion zones to photograph the ruins that are left behind.