It is rather silly to link a Hollywood icon with the problems experienced by an engineering industry. But there was some effect. TCS still comes up in conversation all the time and for many people is still a primary factor in how they look at nuclear power, along with Chernobyl and The Simpsons. That doesn't say much about the discriminating public, but it is true. And there are costs involved when 20 or 30% of the population in a democracy has a substantial fear of a product.

One problem with The China Syndrome is that there has been no reasonable entertainment alternative covering the same ground - nothing out there that looked at nuclear from a more reasoned perspective with an insiders view, and is fun as well. There is now. "Rad Decision" is a technothriller novel that covers energy basics and the good and bad of nuclear in particular, all within the typical story of mayhem you would expect. It is available at no cost to readers at http://RadDecision.blogspot.com (they seem to like it judging frm their homepage comments) and is also available in paperback at online retailers. (The author gets no royalties.)

Stewart Brand, noted environmentalist, founder of The Whole Earth Catalog and a National Book Award winner has said: "I'd like to see Rad Decision widely read."

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Jane and The Gorilla ..............its a thriller!

The Freakonomics guys are a bunch of right wing propagandists selling lies. Like Tom Friedman they are in the pay of the globalists and are paid to come up with "World is Flat" explanations of why
being screwed by big business is good for you and fair.

If they give your kids cancer then it is to stop global warming.

More CO2 and monoxide is good for plants and ethanol won't work as a motor fuel, you need to die for oil.

Also Marijuana of Kudzu won't work as a fabric or rope, you need fertilizer and pesticide intensive cotton and oil based polyester.

Give me a break! To blame this on Fonda is absurd. As fellow posters have pointed out, China Syndrome would have had no affect if nuclear disasters were not happening simultaneously. But, hey, it's more fun to blame Jane!

Around the time "The China Syndrome" was released, I began working with groups whose preferred energy policy could be summarized as "Use efficiency as a bridge to renewables." As Physicist Amory Lovins pointed out at the time---and is still pointing out today---we have tremendous potential in this country for cost-effectively squeezing more energy out of the sources we already have. As some of us were saying then, the logical thing to do was to use that capacity rather than blindly throwing up more power plants, nuclear or otherwise. In the meantime, we could mount a major national program to develop a range of renewable-energy sources. Thankfully, we even had a president then who sort of partly got it---enough to make us cautiously optimistic.

Then came Ronald Reagan who thought conservation meant "freezing in the dark." He also had the solar collectors, installed by Carter, removed from the White House. And now, 28 years after "The China Syndrome," the New York Times grants space to two idiots to pose that hoary false choice between nuclear and fossil fuels. Paradigm shifts can take a dangerously long time.

While you're at it, blame the steel industry because it depends on carbon which is made from coal and blame the paper industry as well and so many others. Dubner and Levitt are completely blind as to who to blame.

Dubner and Levitt are idiots. Blame Hollywood? Blame Fonda? They might as well Put The Blame On Mame and Auntie Mame for that matter too. I can't believe that these jerks are still seeking Jane Fonda as a villian. The villains were those who operated and built these nuclear power plants that proved so dangerous e.g., Three Mile Island etc. Instead of looking for alternative energy sources, politicians were responsible, along with those who had a financial interest in it, for keeping people coal dependent. Blame Washington and West Virginians etc stupid, not Jane Fonda.

Utter nonsense.

Jane Fonda was born after WW2,
Let's blame her for starting WW@, as long as we placing blaming.

poor woman?
What else does this dumb editor want to dump on her? Must have been a real slow day if that's all he had to write abiut.
I peg him as DUMB!

Choose your poison. Death by radioactivity or by climate change.

so, jane fonda's a source of global warming?
i can buy that. i always suspected she was full of beans.
methane's a horrid greenhouse gas.

If I hold a gun to your head and tell you if you don't kill the next person that walks by I'm going to kill the two people that walk by after them, and you don't kill that one person and I do kill those two people, that must make you responsible for the additional murder, right? WTF is NYT doing running this crap?

The repugs can't stand that Jane Fonda is a smart, well-spoken, gorgeous babe.