The China Syndrome

Richard Adams: I showed the film to a nuclear engineer. You almost uncovered the core, Mr. Godell.

Kimberly Wells: Mr. Godell, you lied to me last night. We're not going to leave here until you tell us what happened at the plant.

Jack Godell: So some anti-nuclear nut tells you we almost uncovered the core? But we didn't uncover it, did we? We stopped it in time for one simple reason and I told you that! The system works, goddamn it! The system works! That's not the problem!

[he turns away]

Richard Adams: If that's not the problem, then what the hell is?

Jack Godell: [wiping sweat from his forehead] I love that plant. It's my whole life.

Kimberly Wells: What is the problem?

Jack Godell: The shudder... The damn shudder. The vibration I felt during the turbine trip. It bothered me. But it sure didn't bother anyone else. And while I'm checking it, I find that some idiot phonied the welding X-rays. I just can not believe a man would deliberately falsify the records of a nuclear reactor. My god!

Richard Adams: Holy shit.

Kimberly Wells: That means the plant's not safe.

Jack Godell: It means that vibration was a warning and the plant should be shut down, every one of those welds should be re-X-rayed... Of course we're talking about millions of dollars, but we don't want to talk about that. And no one will believe me. But if they ever put too much pressure on that pump, rupture those pipes...

Kimberly Wells: China Syndrome.

Jack Godell: It's possible.

Greg Minor: [reviewing the film footage that Richard had secretly taken while at the nuclear power plant during the emergency] It looks serious. In the control room, these lights are concerned with core water level. They might have come close to exposing the core.

Dr. Lowell: If that's true, we came very close to the China Syndrome.

Kimberly Wells: The what?

Dr. Lowell: If the core is exposed for whatever reason, the fuel heats beyond core heat tolerance in a matter of minutes. Nothing can stop it. And it melts down right through the bottom of the plant, theoretically to China. But of course, as soon as it hits ground water, it blasts into the atmosphere and sends out clouds of radioactivity. The number of people killed would depend on which way the wind is blowing. Render an area the size of Pennsylvania permanently uninhabitable, not to mention the cancer that would show up later.