SCREEN GIVES REALITY TO HUMANITY’S NUCLEAR NIGHTMARES : It Was Almost Impossible for Anyone of a Certain Age Not to Flash on Images From ‘On the Beach’ and ‘China Syndrome’ When Reports of the Soviet Tragedy Became Known : TV NETWORKS ARE COOL TOWARD DOOM DRAMAS

Although today’s headlines occasionally become tomorrow’s TV movie, network officials say they’ve had only a few proposals for dramas about nuclear-plant meltdown disasters, such as the one that occurred April 26 at the Chernobyl facility in the Soviet Union.

But executives at the three networks say they wouldn’t be interested, anyway. At ABC, they say that nuclear doom dramas already have been done, most notably ABC’s high-rated nuclear-war film of 1983 “The Day After,” and more would only be variations on a theme.

At CBS, it is believed that such dramas usually are a turn-off for viewers.

NBC has three different reasons why it isn’t accepting based-on-Chernobyl proposals or pitches for a small-screen edition of “The China Syndrome.”

It had in hand a trio of proposals for dramas involving nuclear power well before the Chernobyl accident.

Steve White, head of miniseries and movies at NBC, says the projects, none of them yet made, are:

--”The Warning: The Incident at Three Mile Island,” based on the much-publicized 1979 accident at the Pennsylvania nuclear power plant.

--”24 Hours to Shutdown,” based on a true story of how American technicians, working against time, dismantled and removed from South Vietnam a small American-built nuclear power plant in the Central Highlands city of Dalat before the fall of Saigon in 1975.

--An as-yet untitled three-hour TV movie about Dr. Helen Caldicott, the anti-nuclear arms activist, aphysician and author. The project was brought to NBC 1 1/2 years ago by two-time best actress Oscar winner Sally Field, “who came to me and said, ‘I want to do it,’ ” White says.

The Field proposal, he says, led to a deal to develop the movie. NBC is still waiting for a script that both the network and Field find acceptable. No target air date for the movie has been set, White says, although the two other projects may air next season, depending on approval of scripts now in rewrite stages.

As for post-Chernobyl program pitches from writers or producers, “I haven’t had any that I’m aware of,” White says.

Steve Mills, White’s counterpart at CBS, says that his network has gotten “a couple of isolated instances of people asking if we’d be interested (in a nuclear meltdown project). We’ve responded that we’re not interested.”

Why so? “I think there’ve been a couple of ‘China Syndrome’ things already done on television, and they don’t do all that well,” Mills says. “People are put off by them.” There also is a problem with stories taken from today’s headlines.

They tend to become dated, he says: “Last week it’s the terrorists, this week, the meltdown.” And, he adds, under the best of circumstances it takes a minimum of six months to go from story pitch to ready-to-air production.

Bruce J. Sallan, ABC vice president for TV movies, says he only has gotten one pitch for a nuclear meltdown movie in the wake of the Chernobyl accident, but that such a film isn’t in his network’s future.

“No,” he says, “I think from ABC’s point of view that we’ve both done it in other forms, and it would be a rehashing of the same things” that ABC has covered in such entertainment programs as “The Day After.”

NBC’s White emphasizes that it was just circumstance, not a desire to “get into some kind of nuclear trend,” that his network had its three projects under development months before the accident at Chernobyl.

They were among 100 assorted miniseries and TV movie proposals being pondered before the Chernobyl meltdown, he says, and while nuclear power is integral to each of the three projects, “they’re three very different stories . . . they’re not at all linked to an issue.”

Still, he says, he thinks that nuclear power--whether for energy or war--”has been a growing preoccupation in the ‘80s, and film and television have tended to reflect it.”