Word: plante
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...picture is wonderfully fair to moviegoers, a superbly suspenseful, expertly crafted, entirely riveting entertainment. It is hard to recall a movie of recent years as absorbing, or as much fun, as The China Syndrome. That rather obscure title, by the way, refers to the theoretical destination of a plant's super-hot uranium core if it somehow lost its liquid coolant and burned through the floor, into the earth and onward to China...
That's what almost happens the day a television news team-Reporter Jane Fonda, Cameraman Michael Douglas −takes a routine tour of a nuclear power plant. They're in the visitors' gallery, looking into the control room presided over by Veteran Engineer Jack Lemmon, when everyone down there starts falling madly about. Some sort of crisis is obviously at hand. Ordered not to shoot...
Meantime, something parallel is happening to Technocrat Lemmon. He has always been a believer not only in nuclear power but also in the elaborate Fail-Safe system that makes its peaceful use feasible. Now, however, his superiors push him a little too hard to get the disabled plant back on line faster than he thinks it should be. He also discovers that the contractors who built the plant have falsified vital safety certificates. But even as he's getting on to them, they're getting on to him−no way anyone's going to let fraudulent...
...nuclear plants safe? The answer depends on the definition of "safe." If it means accident-proof, then the answer, as applied to anything from a bicycle to a steel mill, is no. A nuclear plant cannot blow up like an atomic bomb. A plant could, however, suffer a "meltdown" if it loses the water used to cool its uranium core, overheats, ruptures the core's container and releases a deadly cloud of radioactive gases. In the event of such an accident, people close to the plant would die quickly, while others, living as far as a couple of hundred...
...vessels" capable of withstanding tremendous pressures from within. All reactors are equipped with automatic shut-off and multiple back-up systems so that any "loss of coolant" that could start a system on the slope toward a meltdown can be quickly corrected. The NRC maintains resident inspectors at many plants, makes unannounced inspections of others and, as last week's action demonstrates, is willing to shut down a plant for as long as necessary if there is even the slightest question of safety...