The China Syndrome exposed issues of nuclear safety at a time when the nation's limited energy resources had already created a national crisis. America's energy problems had first surfaced in October 1973, when a group of Arab nations attacked Israel in what was known as the Yom Kippur War, and the United States sent emergency assistance to its Jewish ally. The Arab nations then used their collective power in an international oil cartel, OPEC (Oil Producing Export Countries), to place an embargo on all oil sales to the United States and its allies in western Europe and Japan.

The OPEC embargo had immediate economic and political effects. First, shortages of supplies forced businesses and consumers to begin rationing energy use. The federal government mandated maximum speed limits of 55 mph, ordered a lowering of thermostats in public buildings, and instituted daylight savings time in winter. Second, rising fuel and heating costs caused some manufacturers to suspend fulltime work, aggravating an economic slowdown that had afflicted the economy for several years. Third, petroleum shortages caused domestic oil prices to escalate upwards (gasoline jumped from about 30 cents per gallon to about a dollar), contributing to an inflation of prices throughout the economy.

In political terms, the oil embargo reinforced a sense of limits about America's influence in the global arena. Although the United States remained militarily supreme, America's retreat from Vietnam in 1973, like its inability to obtain oil from the Middle East, revealed the problems of exercising power among the small countries of the world. The failure of President Richard Nixon to end the embargo, which lasted for five months, contributed to his unpopularity. The simultaneous Watergate investigations that led to Nixon's resignation from the presidency in August 1974 reflected widespread disapproval of his ability to lead the nation.

Presidents Gerald Ford (1974-77) and Jimmy Carter (1977-81) inherited these severe economic problems that were inseparable from the energy crisis. Republicans and Democrats alike understood that the development of energy resources was an imperative goal. But although many economists and environmentalists recommended greater use of renewable resources, such as solar and wind energy, political leaders insisted that continued use of petroleum, supplemented by nuclear energy, was the key to supplying U.S. needs.

Nuclear power plants, which were first introduced in the 1950s, had already experienced technological problems. In 1970, the Dresden II reactor near Chicago had nearly caused a severe overreaction due to a stuck needle on a water level gauge. Subsequently, a fire at the Browns Ferry reactor in Alabama disabled the cooling system and almost uncovered the fuel core, threatening a meltdown. Yet by 1979, nuclear energy provided about 11 percent of the nation's total energy expenditures.

Equally serious, neither the government nor private industry had developed a permanent way to dispose of deadly radioactive waste products. That issue emerged in the Karen Silkwood case, in which a woman working in a plutonium processing plant in Oklahoma claimed to have evidence of safety violations. The car accident scene in The China Syndrome resembled the 1974 accident in which Silkwood was killed. The film Silkwood (1983) portrayed these events.

President Carter had called the energy crisis "the moral equivalent of war." But in 1979, the outbreak of civil war in Iran gave OPEC another opportunity to raise oil prices by 14.5 percent, causing the same monumental inconveniences and higher costs as in 1973-74. Once again, President Carter urged the public to reduce consumption. Neither the White House nor Congress offered additional remedies.

Then on March 30, 1979, national news reporter Walter Cronkite announced, "the world has never known a day quite like today." Two days earlier, a stuck valve at Three Mile Island had overheated the reactor core, threatening to rain deadly radiation around the country. One hundred thousand civilians evacuated their homes for safety. It took another two weeks before engineers brought the disabled reactor under control. The movie, The China Syndrome, seemed terrifyingly prophetic.

The influence of the movie extended beyond its portrayal of the dangers of radioactivity. The film also suggested that leaders of the energy corporations and the government regulatory agencies, together with their allies in the media, could not be trusted to tell the truth about nuclear energy to a wary and nervous public. Such skepticism about corporate and government leaders reflected fresh memories of the Watergate scandals which involved not only Nixon's lying to the public, but illegal corporate influence in government policymaking. In addition, national opinion surveys in the mid-1970s found a tremendous drop in public confidence about political leaders, professionals (doctors and lawyers), and business practices. The China Syndrome's slightly paranoid plot appealed to these feelings of public distrust.

The movie's message had more than an emotional impact. By introducing two naïve characters at the beginning of the story (Kimberly Wells and Jack Godell), the narrative showed them gradually awakening to a reality they could hardly have imagined at the beginning of the story. Audiences responded to this device. A survey of filmgoers by two scholars (see Michael Ryan and Douglas Kellner, Camera Politica: The Politics and Ideology of Contemporary Hollywood Film [1988]), found that 37 percent traced their opposition to nuclear power to seeing this movie. Such responses, together with the high cost of building and operating nuclear power plants, sent a chill through the industry. Numerous planned projects were abruptly cancelled, and new plants have not been built.

Back to top   At the Movies   The China Syndrome