Y'know, after watching this again 37 years later, I see it differently
I was an impressionable thirteen-year-old when this came out. I remember wanting to see it, but I also remember that it faded very quickly after being released and was about to die a quick, painless death.
And then, just twelve days after it was released, Three Mile Island happened. The line from that expert when they're watching the film - "rendering an area the size of Pennsylvania permanently uninhabitable" - was practically prescient.
When I watched it at the time, all those years ago, first in the theater (my friend's mom took us), and then repeatedly about a year later on HBO, the message I got from the movie was, "Nuclear power is safe, or more to the point, would be safe, so long as the goddamned contractors just followed the rules - and even if they don't, the backup systems to backup systems to backup systems will keep us safe."
Now, older and wiser, and more world-weary and jaded, I get the actual message: nuclear power can never be safe, because when money is involved, corners will always get cut, and safety will get compromised. Although this movie is fiction, the underlying fact remains - big corporate America will always do whatever it takes to make sure their precious profit line isn't diminished.
I want the doctor to take your picture so I can look at you from inside as well.