The results of a simple chemical experiment showed for the first time that the atom could be split, unleashing immense power. In the following months as Europe braced itself for war the Wehrmacht started a research programme to develop nuclear weapons. The Germans were the first to start work on the atom bomb. Why wasn’t Hitler the first to use it? Horizon: Hitler’s Bomb, BBC 1992
Beneath the church in a cliff there was a disused beer cellar. In it the Americans had found a nuclear reactor. An experiment on the brink of criticality. When these cubes of Uranium were immersed in heavy water a chain reaction would begin. A storm of neutrons would sweep through the reactor. Slowly the uranium would be transformed into Plutonium, the raw material of atomic bombs. ibid.
What made fission so dangerous was that as each uranium atoms splits it releases not only a huge amount of energy but it also liberates more neutrons. These can collide with further nuclei creating a hugely energetic chain reaction. ibid.
It is one of the great ironies of the war that just as the Wehrmacht was rejecting atom weapons, fear of a Nazi bomb was pushing America into is own massive nuclear project. ibid.
French engineers and scientists are building a great scientific machine. It’s a nuclear accelerator called the Vivitron. It’s cost eight billion pounds. And part of it has come from Britain. Horizon: An Expensive Theology, BBC 1992
They’re working with the nucleus of the magnesium atom. The magnesium atoms are accelerated down this huge tower ... The nuclei are fired into a target also of magnesium. ibid.
The funding was established by treaty. ibid.
The first Cyclotron was a giant of its day. ibid.
The collision creates a tiny fireball getting close to the Big Bang at the start of our universe. ibid.
Quarks: five have been detected. ibid.
Cern costs £350 million a year ... Cern is governed by international treaty. ibid.
Mrs Thatcher even visited Cern to enthuse over the experiments. ibid.
The particle physicists are asking for funds for the next stage of their research. ibid.
The Americans are planning an even bigger rival. Here in Texas they’ve started construction on the Superconducting Super Collider. ibid.
In 1939 on the eve of the Second World War Albert Einstein wrote a letter to the American president Franklin Roosevelt. The letter was about an application of Einstein’s famous equation: E=MC². And his fear that the Nazis could use it to build an atomic bomb. Horizon: Einstein’s Equation of Life and Death, BBC 2005
Albert Einstein would later describe … the one mistake of his life. This is the story of his famous equation. ibid.
[Leo] Szilard was fearful it was only a matter of time before someone would find a way of harnessing the power of E=MC² and make a bomb ... What made Leo Szilard’s idea so brilliant was that here for the first time was a way of getting energy out of the atom without having to pump in vast amounts of power. All you had to do was set off one tiny neutron to trigger an unstoppable chain reaction. Leo Szilard had potentially found a way to unleash the power of E=MC² on Earth. But it was a discovery that terrified him. ibid.
In the wilderness of New Mexico the US government set up a top-secret project codenamed Manhattan. From Einstein’s letter grew the biggest and most remarkable collaboration between science and the military the world has ever seen. ibid.
On a bright morning in August 1945 the first atomic bomb was dropped. It fell through the air for forty-three seconds, and then a single neutron started Szilard’s chain reaction. The energy released as the first atom of Uranium split was only enough to make a grain of sand jump. And then the chain reaction became unstoppable ... Just 0.6 of a gram of mass converted into energy laid waste the city. ibid.
Einstein felt he had to bear some responsibility for the development of the atomic bomb. ibid.
A team of Soviet scientists risk their lives in the aftermath of the disaster go to inside Chernobyl. Five years ago Horizon went with them – the first Western television unit to do so. They revealed the extent of the danger from the reactor and the sarcophagus built around it. Horizon: Inside Chernobyl’s Sarcophagus, BBC 1996
Chernobyl, 1991: five years after the accident this is the final resting place for 135 tons of uranium, plutonium and other extreme radioactive elements. The contents of this tomb will remain radioactive for at least 100,000 years. ibid.
The hunt for Chernobyl’s escaped nuclear fuel has been vital since the first moments after the accident in April 1986. The nuclear explosion destroyed the top of the reactor building and radioactive smoke was pouring forth. ibid.
Entire content of the core had simply vanished. If it wasn’t inside the reactor, where had the escaped fuel gone? Attention switched to the intensely radioactive rooms underneath the reactor. ibid.
A British scientist who saw Horizon’s film took blood samples from the Soviet team. High radiation doses had left their mark: abnormal chromosomes. ibid.
While Chernobyl becomes a billion-dollar bargaining card the fate of the sarcophagus remains as uncertain as it was five years ago. ibid.
For the last fifty years we’ve lived with the fear of radiation ... A growing number of scientists are asking whether it’s time to think again about the dangers of radiation. Horizon: Nuclear Nightmares, BBC 2006
Back in the 1920s and ’30s devices were sold that deliberately increased our radiation exposure ... In fact radiation became so fashionable it was used as a brand name to sell ordinary household items. ibid.
In the mid-1950s Britain opened the world’s first nuclear power station. Other countries raced to catch up. Nuclear power stations spread across the industrialised world. ibid.
Then in 1979 came America’s worst nuclear accident. Three Mile Island shook America’s confidence in nuclear power. Though there was no significant release of radiation. ibid.
Tatiana lived in the town of Pripyat within sight of the power station. Driving down the main street memories of the evacuation flood back ... Some 200,000 abortions are thought to have been performed. Tatiana was one of the few to resist, and Aliona was born healthy six months later. But the family has lived in fear ever since of what her exposure to radiation might mean. ibid.
The accident sent a radioactive plume of fear across Europe. If Three Mile Island had been bad for nuclear power, Chernobyl was a catastrophe. The expansion of the nuclear power programme came to a halt. It had become environmentally and politically too controversial. ibid.
47 deaths among liquidators, 9 deaths from childhood thyroid cancer ... That makes a maximum of 56 deaths that can be directly attributed to the effects of radiation. ibid.
In Chernobyl today thanks to the clean-up operation radiation levels are no higher than normal background in many parts of the world. Yet people’s lives are still being scarred by the fear of it. ibid.
It sounds totally improbable but it appears radiation may actually help the body resist genetic damage. What could be going on? ... Low level radiation may be beneficial. ibid.
Some scientists now believe the impact of this same radiophobia could be very damaging. ibid.
At the Three-Mile Island Power Station in Pennsylvania a series of human and mechanical errors caused the nuclear reactor to overheat. As the temperature increased so too did the risk that the radioactive fuel would escape its casing. For forty-eight hours the station stood on the brink of total meltdown. Eventually the reactor cooled. And the fuel was contained. Deep inside lay ten million litres of contaminated water. And a further one hundred tons of uranium. It would take over a decade to dispose of it. Horizon: The President’s Guide to Science, BBC 2008
Yet despite decades of research and this fleeting glimpse of fusion no electricity will ever make it from here to the grid. Learning how to make useful power from fusion remains outside our capabilities. Horizon: Can We Make a Star on Earth? BBC 2009
There was no going back. The nuclear arms race had begun. During the ’50s and ’60s the superpowers built increasingly bigger bombs in a bid to defend themselves from each other. The result was an arsenal of weapons that could wipe humanity from the face of the earth. The threat of Armageddon was real. And many people lived with the daily fear of nuclear annihilation. ibid.
Thousands took to the streets in protests against the apparent insanity of the arms race. ibid.
The tsunami then triggered a near-meltdown in one of the country’s nuclear power stations. The disaster has claimed over ten thousand lives. Over twice as many are still missing. Iain Stewart, Japan Earthquake: A Horizon Special, BBC 2011
This isn’t the first time that a Japanese nuclear power plant has been breached by an earthquake. ibid.
Fukushima, north-west Japan: this is as close as you can get to the site of a partial nuclear meltdown six months ago. But the events unfolding here have consequences for us all. Energy is the life-blood of our civilisation. But where it comes from and how we get it is something that touches all our lives. Horizon: Fukushima, Is Nuclear Power Safe? Jim Al-Khalili reporting, BBC 2011