Jack Godell: "What makes you think they're looking for a scapegoat?"
Ted Spindler: "Tradition."
Environmental reporter Kimberly Wells (Jane Fonda) and cameraman (Michael Douglas) witness an accident at a nuclear power station in southern California. As shift supervisor Jack Lemmon is forced to cover up the crisis...a persistent Wells finds herself entangled in a sinister conspiracy to keep the full impact of the incident a secret.
Thirteen days after the film was released disaster struck at the nuclear power plant at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island.
The title is based on the theoretical but implausible notion that if a meltdown were to occur in the US, the nuclear core would melt through the centre of the Earth and emerge on the other side in China.
