Claim: Jane Fonda is a person who acts.

The China Syndrome is a 1979 American thriller film directed by James Bridges and written by Bridges , Mike Gray , and T. S. Cook . It tells the story of a television reporter and her cameraman who discover safety coverups at a nuclear power plant . It stars Jane Fonda , Jack Lemmon , and Michael Douglas , with Douglas also serving as the film 's producer . The cast also features Scott Brady , James Hampton , Peter Donat , Richard Herd , and Wilford Brimley .   It was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Actor in a Leading Role -LRB- Lemmon -RRB- , Best Actress in a Leading Role -LRB- Fonda -RRB- , Best Art Direction-Set Decoration -LRB- George Jenkins , Arthur Jeph Parker -RRB- and Best Writing , Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen . It was also nominated for the Palme d'Or -LRB- Golden Palm -RRB- at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival , and Lemmon won Best Actor for his performance . The film 's script won the 1980 Writers Guild of America award .   The film was released on March 16 , 1979 , twelve days before the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in Dauphin County , Pennsylvania , which gave the film 's subject matter an unexpected prescience . Coincidentally , in one scene , physicist Dr. Elliott Lowell -LRB- Donald Hotton -RRB- says that the China Syndrome would render `` an area the size of Pennsylvania '' permanently uninhabitable .   `` China syndrome '' is a fanciful term -- not intended to be taken literally -- that describes a fictional result of a nuclear meltdown , where reactor components melt through their containment structures and into the underlying earth , `` all the way to China . ''