The purpose of this research was to investigate pre-service science teachers' (PST) views about nuclear energy and to examine what effects, if any, of gender and the university of instruction had on their views. Data were collected through the Risks and Benefits about Nuclear Energy Scale (Iseri, 2012). The sample consisted of 214 PSTs who enrolled in the faculties of education at Ahi Evran University (n = 100) and Erciyes University (n = 114) in Turkey. Findings revealed that the majority of PSTs believed that nuclear energy is useful and almost all participants supported nuclear energy when it concerns electricity and energy generation, national defense and prestige in the international community. Additionally, according to the results of two-way MANOVA analysis, while there was a statistically significant difference regarding the university of instruction, there were no significant differences between genders in both the risk and benefit dimensions. While the eta squared statistic showed a small effect size for the gender variable, a large effect size emerged for the university variable.