The China Syndrome

In the early 80s there was a movie called "The China Syndrome" starring Jack Lemmon, Wilfrid Brimly and Hanoi Jane. I think it was supposed to be an anti-nuclear power movie but it boomeranged.

It is actually a very effective pitch for the safety of nuclear power plants.

A brief plot recap:

1) A corrupt California utility is building a nuclear power plant directly on top of an earthquake fault.

2) Jack Lemmon's character is some sort of project manager or quality inspector and finds that the contractor has been falsifying the pipe weld x-rays. The implication is that the contractor is also cutting corners on the welds themselves.

3) Lemmon goes to management and tries to blow the whistle and gets turned down. Too much money invested to stop now, he is told. He persists and is fired for his troubles.

4) The plant is powered up and there is excessive vibration of the piping. (This seems more like a shock absorber problem than a weld problem but it's a movie, OK?)

5) Lemmon hears about this, goes rogue, arms himself and invades the control room with the intention of shutting down the plant.

6) A SWAT team is called in but can't go into the control room for fear of damaging the controls.

7) A crack team of control engineers completely rewires the plant controls to move control out of the control room.

8) SWAT busts in with flash-bangs and lots of shooting, electrical sparks and so on. Very spectacular and Lemmon is killed.

9) in the meantime a pump vibrates so much that it falls off its mounting necessitating a total plant shut down. This is carried out safely with little more fuss, apparently, than switching off your car ignition.

Early in the movie we are told that "The China Syndrome" is what happens when the reactor goes out of control and melts right through the center of the earth "all the way to China."

So we have all of the above problems and they still shut the plant down with no problem?

That is one safe facility and design. It speaks a lot to the safety of nuclear. It should be shown in every high school every year and someone should explain to the kids what they are seeing. 

Great pro-nuke propaganda