It has for 30 years and likely always will The movie the China Syndrome and the accident at Three Mile Island are forever linked in American history. The movie was showing in theatres nationwide when the cooling pumps failed in Harrisburg, PA, on March 28, 1979. Cinematic visions of an over wrought Jane Fonda, paired with a young Michael Douglas and a hysterical Jack Lemmon, along with melting pools of nuclear fuel rods, are fused in the American imagination and are frequently used