Out with Nuclear Renaissance In with New Energy Era | Bangkok Post: feature

EARTH ALERT

In March 1979 Hollywood released The China Syndrome, a movie about a television journalist (Jane Fonda) and a freelance cameraman (Michael Douglas) who happened upon an irregular incident while filming what was to be a light documentary about a nuclear power plant.

Cooling towers at the Exelon Byron Nuclear Generating Station in Byron, Illinois.

According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, the movie title is a term that describes a series of events that could happen when the loss of coolant in a nuclear reactor leads to the severe meltdown of the core components of the reactor, which then burn through the containment vessel and the housing building, then notionally through the crust and body of the Earth until reaching China.