History Film / TheChinaSyndrome

* VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory: Hector's accident is very reminiscent of the death of activist [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Silkwood Karen Silkwood]].

** Richard secretly films the incident at initial incident from the control room visitor gallery. However, it is a film camera and as such would be given away by the sounds of its mechanisms. The plant's PR man Gibson would surely have heard the camera in the otherwise quiet gallery.

** Richard secretly films the incident at initial incident from the control room visitor gallery. However, it is a film camera and as such would be given away by the sounds of its mechanisms. The plant's PR man Gibson would surely have heard the camera on the otherwise quiet gallery.

* ArtisticLicense: The lights in the control room would not be lost when the reactor scrammed any more than the lights to their controls and instruments would be lost. And even if the main lights did lose power, the backup safety lights would automatically turn on and not wait until the dramatic incident was over.

* InstantCooldown: Averted. The crisis at Ventana begins ''after'' the reactor is safely shut down. A faulty gauge leads the operators to believe the containment vessel is flooded so they open multiple relief valves to dump the coolant, resulting in an immediate OhCrap when they realize too late that the water level is critically low and they're about to incur a TitleDrop when the still-hot core is exposed.

* CoolPet: Kim has a pet tortoise.

[[spoiler:After Richard's friend has a severe driving "accident" while trying to sneak proof of the company's lack of testing to a regulatory committee, Jack's paranoid and frustrated enough to seize a security guard's gun and take control of the reactor. Kim tries to interview Jack live on television (breaking into KXLA's regularly-scheduled programming of ''Series/TheMagnificentMarbleMachine''; no, seriously) so he can inform her viewers just what went wrong, but the power company SCRAM the reactor in order to take control away from Jack (during a SCRAM it runs fully automatic for a short time), then kills the TV signal and sends in a SWAT team to breach the control room and shoot Jack. While he lies dying, the faulty main pump fails as the reactor is brought to maximum power, leading to a terrifying few minutes of [[OhCrap OMG it's gonna blow]]! The pump is finally shut down just as it completely breaks free from its moorings. As the power company's officials attempt to run damage control by discrediting Jack as a madman, Kim (now back on the air) approaches Jack's friend Ted and gets him to state that Jack was sane and that there needs to be a full investigation.]]

Kimberly Wells (Fonda), a newswoman for KXLA-TV in Los Angeles, is frustrated that her station won't let her cover serious news (she's stuck with [[YetAnotherBabyPanda light-hearted non-events]]). Sent on a tour of a nearby nuclear power plant to promote the positives of nuclear energy, she and her cameraman Richard Adams (Douglas) witness the reactor room just as something goes wrong. Supervisor Jack Godell (Lemmon) finds out that the core's close to meltdown and, with alarms blaring and panic mounting, works with his friend Ted (Creator/WilfordBrimley) and his team to fix the problem (during which Jack feels an unusual tremor that unsettles him for the entire movie). While Jack's team saves the plant, Richard has quietly filmed it all with his camera...

[[quoteright:312:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/the_china_syndrome_movie_poster_1979_1020193244.jpg]]

Thinking they've got a big story to report, Kim and Richard are instead told by their bosses at the station to keep quiet and have the film placed in storage while their lawyers figure out their potential liability. Meanwhile, Jack tries to warn his bosses that there's something fishy with the plant, only to have them insist that there's nothing wrong. An investigation into the incident gets rubber-stamped. Meanwhile, the company responsible for the construction of that plant is busy trying to get another one built in a hurry...

At every turn separately and then as a team, Jack, Kim and Richard try to find out what happened and try to warn others that something's wrong. Eventually [[spoiler:Jack realizes that the tremor was caused by faulty welding on the main pump, which will cause the pump to fail if it is pushed to full capacity; This faulty welding was never discovered because, rather than test every single weld like they were supposed to do, the company decided to save money by testing one weld and submitting its test results for every other weld. If this were brought to light, it would force the immediate shutdown of the plant and, most likely, legal charges for its builders and owners]].

[[spoiler:By the time Richard's friend is hurt trying to sneak proof of the lack of testing to a regulatory committee, Jack's paranoid and frustrated enough to seize a security guard's gun and take control of the reactor. Kim tries to interview Jack live on television (breaking into KXLA's regularly-scheduled programming of ''Series/TheMagnificentMarbleMachine''; no, seriously) to help him report what went wrong, but the power company SCRAM the reactor in order to take control away from Jack - during a SCRAM it runs fully automatic for a short time. The power company kills the TV signal and sends in a SWAT team to shoot Jack. While he lies dying, the faulty main coolant pump goes to maximum power ... during which the reactor goes through a terrifying few minutes of OMG it's gonna blow! The pump is finally shut down just as it completely breaks free of its moorings. At the end with the power company trying to paint Jack as a madman, Kim approaches Jack's friend Ted and gets him to say that Jack was sane and that there needs to be a full investigation.]]

Thinking they've got a big story to report, Kim and Richard are instead told by their bosses at the station to keep quiet and have the film placed in storage while their lawyers figure out their potential liability. Meanwhile, Jack tries to warn his bosses that there's something fishy with the plant, only to have them insist there's nothing wrong. An investigation into the incident gets rubber-stamped. Meanwhile, the company responsible for the construction of that plant is busy trying to get another one built in a hurry...

[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/the_china_syndrome_movie_poster_1979_1020193244.jpg]]

Kimberly Wells (Fonda), a newswoman for KXLA-TV in Los Angeles, is frustrated that her station won't let her cover serious news (she's stuck with [[YetAnotherBabyPanda light-hearted non-events]]). Sent on a tour of a nearby nuclear power plant to promote the positives of nuclear energy, she and her cameraman Richard Adams (Douglas) witness the reactor room just as something goes wrong. Supervisor Jack Godell (Lemmon) finds out that the core's close to meltdown and, with alarms blaring and panic mounting, works with his friend Ted (Creator/WilfordBrimley) and his team to fix the problem (during which Jack feels an unusual tremor that unsettles him for the entire movie). While Jack's team saves the plant, Richard had quietly filmed it all with his camera...

* HeroicSacrifice: [[spoiler:Jack Godell fights the power and loses badly... but he manages to unequivocally demonstrate a flaw on the nuclear reactor that the corporation just ''cannot'' leave alone (although they will definitely fix it quietly).]]

* YouKeepUsingThatWord: '''Nucular.''' Mike, you're a great actor and we're sure you put your heart and soul into the project but for the word is '''nuclear'''. Well, however, the President of the United States at the time, UsefulNotes/JimmyCarter, was a trained Nuclear Engineer and pronounces the word that way too.

A 1979 political conspiracy thriller directed by James Bridges and starring Creator/JaneFonda, Creator/JackLemmon, Creator/MichaelDouglas, and a good-sized nuclear reactor in California that won't behave.

Kimberly Wells (Fonda), a newswoman for KXLA-TV in Los Angeles, is frustrated that her station won't let her cover serious news (she's stuck with [[YetAnotherBabyPanda light-hearted non-events]]). Sent on a tour of a nearby nuclear power plant to promote the positives of nuclear energy, she and her cameraman Richard Adams (Douglas) witness the reactor room just as something goes wrong. Supervisor Jack Godell (Lemmon) finds out that the core's close to meltdown and works with his friend Ted (Creator/WilfordBrimley) and his team to fix the problem (during which Jack feels an unusual tremor that unsettles him for the entire movie). While Jack's team saves the plant, Richard had quietly filmed it all with his camera...

Kimberly Wells (Fonda), a newswoman for KXLA-TV in Los Angeles, is frustrated that her station won't let her cover serious news (she's stuck with [[YetAnotherBabyPanda light-hearted non-events]]). Sent on a tour of a nearby nuclear power plant to promote the positives of nuclear energy, she and her cameraman Richard Adams (Douglas) witness the reactor room just as something goes wrong. Supervisor Jack Godell (Lemmon) finds out the core's close to meltdown and works with his friend Ted (Creator/WilfordBrimley) and his team to fix the problem (during which Jack feels an unusual tremor that unsettles him for the entire movie). While Jack's team saves the plant, Richard had quietly filmed it all with his camera...

Thinking they've got a big story to report, Kim and Richard are instead told by their network bosses to keep quiet and have the film placed in storage while their lawyers figure out their liability. Meanwhile, Jack tries to warn his bosses that there's something fishy with the plant, only to have them insist there's nothing wrong. An investigation into the incident gets rubber-stamped. Meanwhile, the company responsible for the construction of that plant is busy trying to get another one built in a hurry...

A local TV newswoman, Kimberly Wells (Fonda), is frustrated that her station (KXLA) won't let her cover serious news (she's stuck with [[YetAnotherBabyPanda light-hearted non-events]]). Sent on a tour of a nearby nuclear power plant to promote the positives of nuclear energy, she and her cameraman Richard Adams (Douglas) witness the reactor room just as something goes wrong. Supervisor Jack Godell (Lemmon) finds out the core's close to meltdown and works with his friend Ted (Creator/WilfordBrimley) and his team to fix the problem (during which Jack feels an unusual tremor that unsettles him for the entire movie). While Jack's team saves the plant, Richard had quietly filmed it all with his camera...

''The China Syndrome'' came out during the post-Watergate era, at a time when the public was in a paranoid mood about the people -- [[StrawmanPolitical politicians]], [[CorruptCorporateExecutive the corporations]], [[StrawmanNewsMedia the media]] -- who seemed to be in charge of things. What made this movie stand out was that on March 28, 1979 (two weeks after ''Syndrome'' was released) [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster]] took place, making what was a standard thriller into a prescient piece of film-making.