FAQ for
The China Syndrome (1979) More at IMDbPro »

The following FAQ entries may contain spoilers. Only the biggest ones (if any) will be covered with spoiler tags. Spoiler tags are used sparingly in order to make the page more readable.

For detailed information about the amounts and types of (a) sex and nudity, (b) violence and gore, (c) profanity, (d) alcohol, drugs, and smoking, and (e) frightening and intense scenes in this movie, consult the IMDb Parents Guide for this movie. The Parents Guide for The China Syndrome can be found here.

No. The China Syndrome is based on a screenplay by director James Bridges and American screenwriters Mike Gray, and T.S. Cook.

The "China Syndrome" refers to the result of an American nuclear plant meltdown in which molten reactor core products can supposedly melt through the crust of the Earth until they reach China. It is explained in the movie, however, that this is unlikely to happen because the superheated core products would come in contact with ground water and turn it into steam. The steam would then create an explosion that would release the radiation into the air. In other words, the core products could never make it all the way through the earth to China.

China Syndrome was released on March 16, 1979. Twelve days later the nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania suffered a partial meltdown. No one was hurt, but the Three Mile Island incident helped propel The China Syndrome into a blockbuster.

The feed water pump was off balance and was causing what is called a reactor "scram" in which the reactors undergo an emergency shutdown followed by a restart. For example, the reactors go from running at 75% to stopping cold and then restarting. The shock of the sudden stops and starts triggered the tremors. The scram problem was further complicated by a stuck pressurizer gauge that was reading a full cooling system when it was actually near empty. Control room supervisor Jack Godell (Jack Lemmon) later discovered that the reason the scram was going unnoticed was because the inspectors were just photocopying the same X-ray over and over.

Troubleshooting the problem would require that the plant be shut down for several months at tremendous cost. On top of that, they were within days of seeking NRC approval for building a second plant. To close down the plant and admit to a scram problem would risk delaying or even losing approval for the second plant. The plant operators hoped to get the reactors back online at full power and pass off the incident as a routine occurrence that actually demonstrated the fail safeness of the system, thereby assuring NRC approval for their second plant. Jack's discovery of the scram, the feed water pump problems, and the falsified inspection x-rays would have led to a monetary disaster for the plant. Their solution, at first, was to ignore Jack's warnings. When that didn't work, stronger measures had to be taken.

Jack takes over the control room and threatens to flood the containment with radiation unless he is allowed to make a public statement with KXLA-TV news reporter Kimberly Wells (Jane Fonda) . Kimberly and Jack prepare for broadcast while awaiting the arrival of a photography team. Meanwhile, the plant officials have brought in a SWAT team to break into the control room, and other loyal employees are preparing to trip the generator and turbine, thereby forcing the reactors to do a total plant scram in order to prevent Jack from flooding the containment. Jack's assistant, Ted Spindler (Wilford Brimley), warns them that a scram is just what Jack is afraid of, but they don't listen to Spindler either.

Everything comes together when the photography team arrives and Kimberly goes on the air. She introduces Jack, who begins to tell the story of what happened during the last "event" and how close the plant came to a disaster. As Jack tries to explain the very complicated workings of the nuclear reactor, Spindler (under orders) cuts the wires that trip the generator. An alarm starts to sound, alerting Jack that the reactors are about to scram. He starts screaming "No! No!" and attempts to rectify the trip. Suddenly, the SWAT team breaks through the door and shoots Jack multiple times in the back. Before he dies, he manages only to whisper into Kimberly's ear, "I feel it", referring to the shaking and shuddering that indicates a scram had begun. On the control screens, everyone watches helplessly as the feed water pump breaks free. Minutes pass as the event plays itself out. When Spindler checks the computer feed, he finds that the event is over and the reactor is stable. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief.

Outside of the plant, multiple TV crews have arrived and KXLA has managed to set up another Cam. Bill Gibson (James Hampton), PR man for the power plant, is conducting interviews that depict Jack as a drunk and a nutcase, assuring the public that they were never in any danger. Angered by their slander against Jack, Kimberly goes back on the air and, although she is finding it hard to maintain composure, she manages to interview Spindler, who finally admits that Jack was not a nutcase and upholds Jack's warning that the plant should be shut down and inspected. In the final scenes, Kimberly's broadcast ends and KXLA goes to a commercial for microwave ovens. Test bars cover the TV screen, the screen goes dark, and credits roll.

It is not possible to discuss on a movie FAQ page the technology and function of nuclear reactors and the possible results of any and all misfunctions. In an attempt to answer the question of whether the China syndrome could happen in real life, however, here is a note that was posted on The China Syndrome message board on 15 March 2007 explaining what would happen in the event of a real nuclear meltdown. As for anything posted anonymously on a wikisite, including this one, the information contained in this note has been unverified by experts. The contributor wrote:

Allow me to contribute. I'm a nuclear engineer employed by a vendor that designs, builds, and supports nuclear power plants. First of all, to clarify a point, the reactor still generates power after it has been shut down. Decay events continue even after the fission reactions have ceased, and these decay events account for about 10% of the power in the core. So a reactor that is shut down can more accurately be regarded (from a safety standpoint) as having been reduced to 10% power. This 10% power is, of course, comparatively low and it cannot trigger a "China syndrome" because there are no fission reactions generating neutrons.

There has never been any evidence that melted fuel would burn through the ground to the water table. That is more or less a theoretical worst case scenario that ignores many real-life factors. The reactor vessel in western plants is six inches thick and, being steel, dissipates heat very well. Even if every drop of water in the vessel were changed to steam and/or removed, it is still questionable whether or not the melted fuel would get through the vessel; even if it did, the process would be slow and would cool the fuel. If the fuel did make it to the floor, it certainly would not dig its way down through the concrete floor and into the Earth. The fuel does not have to come into contact with large amounts of water to cool. The "China syndrome" where the fuel goes all the way to the water table pretty much assumes that it does not cool at all on its way there and also that the ground offers little to no resistance to movement. Both of these assumptions do not reflect reality. In the real world, the fuel would likely cool and solidify on its surface, trapping the still-liquid fuel inside.

Three Mile Island unit 2 (TMI-2) suffered a partial meltdown of its core. The melted fuel (melted by the aforementioned decay heat) got through to the baffle on the outside of the inner core and came in contact with the outer shell of the reactor vessel. The vessel was not even close to being compromised -- the fuel in contact with the vessel solidifed like described above, and that solid fuel acted as insulation between the vessel and the liquid fuel. There is a huge amount of conservatism built into the structures at a nuclear power plant. TMI-2 proved the usefulness of this by undergoing one of the worst scenarios possible at an American plant (loss of secondary cooling, small-break LOCA, emergency core cooling shut off) without challenging the structural limits of the plant components.

The more likely scenario in the event of a runaway reaction is that the fuel would convert water to steam at a large enough rate to blow the vessel apart. This is what happened at Chernobyl -- the vessel (if it can be called that, RBMKs effectively do not have pressure vessels) was blown to pieces because of pressure resulting from an out of control core. As has been pointed out elsewhere in this thread, this is not possible in western reactors because they are built with negative moderator coefficients. This means the power level decreases as the temperature of the moderator increases. The American NRC will not even consider a design that has a positive moderator coefficient (like Chernobyl did), because such a design can undergo such a disaterous transient.

Even with all of this, one of the Generation III+ reactor designs -- the AREVA EPR, the first of which is currently under construction in Finland -- incorporates a core catcher. This structure catches and cools any waste, fuel, and debris that exits the vessel in the event of a "core on the floor" accident.