The Japanese China Syndrome Gets Worse

Back in the 70s, I remember the Three Mile Island incident dominating the news. It was during the Carter Administration, and I was barely a teenager. I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to the news then, and we only really had Walter Cronkite and two other networks for half an hour per night. But it was significant enough to make a very large impact. But I'd wager not many people who remember it remember the details. No, we remember The China Syndrome.

The movie about a nuclear meltdown opened just before the incident about a nuclear meltdown. The Jane Fonda thriller seemed a lot more urgent than what's going on in Japan. I don't mean that to sound like the nuclear catastrophe in Japan isn't serious. It's just that The China Syndrome made it all seem like a ticking time bomb. A race against time, or BOOOOMMMM!!!! This has been going on for a month now. And they just raised the threat level two notches, above Three Mile Island and up to Chernobyl. There is no higher step. Eeep.

[Excerpt]

Japan raises nuclear crisis alert level



The Japanese government's nuclear safety agency raised the crisis level of the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant accident from 5 to 7, the worst on the international scale and on par with the Chernobyl accident 25 years ago. . .
 
Read more at: MSNBC