What is the China Syndrome?

Answer 1

It was a total fiction masquerading as truth and the gullible public at the time believed it. The film by the same name had an overheating nuclear reactor theoretically capable of melting anything below it. The scientists (well paid and good actors- Jane Fonda, Michael Douglas, Jack Lemmon) were under the belief from so-called experts (Hollywood Fiction) that it could bore a hole through the earth from the USA to China. It ignored the fact that the earth's center is composed of molten rock at very high temperatures, so anything which penetrated that far would just be absorbed into the molten mass. It would never penetrate that far since it would shut down very early in the process.

However the message of radiation being dangerous when not contained was accurate as Chernobyl proved seven years later. But the Three Mile Island reactor accident which (bad timing for the Nuclear Energy public image) happened the same year as the film, was contained and nobody was killed as a result. The Chernobyl accident happened seven years later which did cause 47 deaths within a 15 year period following and estimates up to 4000 cancer related deaths have been predicted (Wikipedia).

Because of the the amazing efficiency of nuclear energy the science of safety was mastered to allow this important resource to continue, yet at a great monetary expense. Ironically the safest nuclear energy technology which has come and gone is called a Molten Salt Reactor and the idea has been revived in recent years under the name Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR). Politics and commercial competitive forces have kept it from making a comeback.