The China Syndrome The China Syndrome The China Syndrome is a 1979 American disaster thriller film directed by James Bridges and written by Bridges, Mike Gray, and T. S. Cook. It tells the story of a television reporter and her cameraman who discover safety coverups at a nuclear power plant. It stars Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon, and Michael Douglas, with Douglas also serving as the film's producer. The cast also features Scott Brady, James Hampton, Peter Donat, Richard Herd, and Wilford Brimley. "China syndrome" is a fanciful term—not intended to be taken literally—that describes a fictional result of a nuclear meltdown, where reactor
Nuclear meltdown of the film when a meltdown at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island Plant 2 (TMI-2) created a molten core that moved 15 millimeters toward "China" before the core froze at the bottom of the reactor pressure vessel. Thus, the TMI-2 reactor fuel and fission products breached the fuel plates, but the melted core itself did not break the containment of the reactor vessel. Hours after the meltdown, concern about hydrogen build-up led operators to release some radioactive gasses into the atmosphere, including gaseous fission products. Release of the fission products led to a temporary evacuation of the surrounding area, but no