Jane Fonda isn't a nuclear expert, but she played one on TV. In the 1979 film The China Syndrome, Fonda portrayed Kimberly Wells, a vivacious news reporter who discovered a cover-up at a nuclear power plant. The conspiracy involved the possibility of a meltdown that could "render an area the size of Pennsylvania permanently uninhabitable."
The movie's timing and location were both impeccable. Twelve days after Fonda's film hit theaters, a reactor at Three Mile Island (TMI) in central Pennsylvania partially melted down. The accident resulted from "mechanical malfunctions…made much worse by a combination of human errors," according to a federal post-mortem report.
