China syndrome
noun · first attested 1970s
An engineers' joke about digging to China became the name of a real fear twelve days before Three Mile Island.
A hypothetical reactor accident in which the molten core melts through its containment and down into the earth.
People's Republic of China·People's Republic of China
35.8447°N 103.4519°E · Q148
Record
- Relationship
- Named from the place
- Confidence
- Well attestedThe place link is the standard scholarly account.
- Attested
- 1970s
- Part of speech
- noun
Explanations here are written for this atlas. Dictionary text is not copied; the sources are linked so the claim can be checked.
- Step 1
People's Republic of China
- In English
China syndrome
American nuclear engineers used the phrase in the 1960s and 1970s for the worst case of a loss-of-coolant accident, riffing on the children's idea that a hole dug deep enough comes out in China. The film The China Syndrome opened on 16 March 1979; the accident at Three Mile Island began on 28 March. Physically the core would stop far short of the mantle, let alone the far side of the planet.