The Three Mile Island accident was the most



significant in the history of the American

commercial nuclear power generating industry.

Living in Pennsylvania at the time of the

accident, I remember it as if it was yesterday.

It began on Wednesday,the 28TH of March 1979.It

took local, state and federal officals five days

to decide what to do with the residents of local

communities.

But on March 16th of that same year,just 12 days

before this incident at Three Mile Island in

Pennsylvania, a new movie "The China Syndrome"

had benn realised.

The China Syndrome is a thriller film which tells

the story of a reporter and cameraman who discover

safety coverups at a nuclear power plant. It stars

Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon, Michael Douglas, Scott

Brady, James Hampton, Peter Donat, Richard Herd,

and Wilford Brimley.

Basically the storyline of this movie is about a

reporter who finds what appears to be a cover-up

of safety hazards at a nuclear power plant.

TV news reporter Kimberly Wells (Fonda) and her

cameraman Richard Adams (Douglas) visit the

Ventana nuclear power plant outside Los Angeles as

part of a series of news reports on energy

production. While viewing the control room from an

observation room, the plant goes through a reactor

SCRAM. Shift supervisor Jack Godell (Lemmon)

notices what he believes to be an unusual

vibration during the SCRAM. Checking their gauges,

the control room staff finds that water levels in

the reactor core have risen to high levels; they

begin opening relief valves in an effort to

prevent too much water from damaging the plant.

Eventually Godell takes matter into his own hands

and ends up dead after being shot by members of

the local swat team after he took over the control

room.

The implication that the company's security

people are willing to kill to silence a

whistleblower echoes allegations made about the

death of Karen Silkwood, who died in a 1974

automobile accident while on her way to meet with

a reporter to disclose nuclear power safety

violations.

In the film, a physicist says that the China

Syndrome would render "an area the size of

Pennsylvania" permanently uninhabitable. It

resulted, however, in no deaths or injuries to

plant workers or members of the nearby community.

However, following the event, the number of

reactors under construction declined every year

from 1980 to 1998. The TMI accident, along with

the release of this movie, had a psychological

effect on the nation. Before the accident, 70

percent of the general public approved of nuclear

power. After it, support for nuclear power across

the country fell to about 50 percent, where it

remained for decades.