Interesting timeline fact: The Three Mile Island meltdown occured 12 days after The China Syndrome release. This catapulted the film into the cultural zeitgeist.
I just re-read the Wikipedia summary and must have mis-remembered the details. It was actually fairly bad, but I guess due to the layered safety even when so many things failed it didn't really do much harm, other than ti the equipment. That it occurred so closely after that movie must have seriously catapulted it into significance.
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