By 1958 the United States had tested twenty-three nuclear bombs on Bikini, climaxing with the Hydrogen bomb test – codenamed Bravo. ibid.
Radiation is still dangerously present in the eco-system. No-one knows for sure how this will affect island and marine wildlife in the long run. ibid.
We were sad when we were first evacuated and moved. And then after resettling, they moved us off again because it was still contaminated with the poison. It was like we were being used in a baseball game. Kelen Joash, Bikinian
We weren’t issued anything ... Nothing. We were just in everyday clothes and a pair of rubber gloves and that was that. We was exposed pretty heavy. David Jordan, 18 when assigned to Bikini Atoll, Operation Crossroads veteran
The United States was the only country on the planet at that time that had nuclear weapons. I think they wanted to prove that they had more than just a few nuclear weapons, and they wanted other nations to realise that by putting on a big show that they had a lot more weapons than some people thought. Steve Wiper, naval historian
It turned out to be kind of a flop because very few ships were sunk from that [first test]. And leading up to that, the hype and propaganda had led everyone to believe that the fleet was going to be virtually wiped out by this one weapon. Steve Wiper
In 1978 they sent people up with whole-body counters and they did a whole-body count on the Bikinians and they discovered that these people had huge amounts of Caesium in their body. Jack Niedenthal, Trust Liaison for the People of Bikini Atoll
The atom bomb is a paper tiger which the United States’ reactionaries use to scare people. Mao Zedong
Like every British leader since the Second World War Harold Macmillan was convinced that independent nuclear capacity was the only way to preserve Britain’s world power status ... In exchange for a new generation of missiles for Britain he agreed to offer a Scottish sea-base for American Polaris submarines ... The new Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament was fuelling the anti-establishment across Britain. Andrew Marr’s History of Modern Britain, BBC 2007
In the twentieth century – our age – our brilliance and our foolishness collided to produce one of the greatest moral dilemmas humankind has faced. For three years Robert Oppenheimer had led a top secret mission to end the deadliest war in the history of the war. Andrew Marr’s History of the World VIII: Age of Extremes, BBC 2012
The United States strongly seeks a lasting agreement for the discontinuance of nuclear weapons tests. We believe that this would be an important step toward reduction of international tensions and would open the way to further agreement on substantial measures of disarmament. Dwight D Eisenhower
If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is make the rubble bounce. Winston Churchill
But what I did immorally I would say was not to remember the reason that I said I was doing it. So that when the reason changed, which was that Germany was defeated, not a single thought came to my mind at all about that ... I simply didn’t think. Professor Richard Feynman, Manhattan Project
The nuclear part of the forces as we’ve discovered has one peculiar characteristic: that is that you can change a neutron for a proton and it doesn’t make any difference to the force. We say that the nuclear forces have a symmetry. Richard Feynman, Horizon: Strangeness Minus Three, BBC 1964
Is there an extension, an additional symmetry between the particles? ibid.
This week Horizon looks at a dilemma. The dilemma of the scientist who try as he might cannot reconcile with his conscience the fear that his discoveries may eventually be used to the detriment of mankind. Horizon: For The Safety of Mankind, 1969
Martin is an air commander with Strategic Air Command. Every four days he leaves his family to go to an underground bomb-proof command post to take charge of ten Minuteman missiles. If need be he is fully prepared to take part in the destruction of whole nations and ultimately his family and himself. Horizon: Rumours of Wars, BBC 1971
They hum menacingly. If you touch them they feel alive. ibid.
This film is the story of a metal. A metal which for a hundred and fifty years since its discovery at the end of the eighteenth century was virtually unused. Now this metal is being dug and blasted from the earth at such a rapidly increasing rate that all known reserves could well be exhausted before the year 2000. This is the story of Uranium. Horizon: Uranium Goes Critical, BBC 1979
Uranium doesn’t have much of a past, and it may not have much of a future. ibid.
An energy source that was once described as limitless. ibid.
The world has over two hundred powered reactors. ibid.
Only its weight was remarkable: one and a half times as heavy as lead. ibid.
Until the 1940s glazing pottery and colouring glass was the most important application that had been found for uranium. ibid.
In ultra-violet light the florescence is very strong ... A great many uranium salts and minerals display the same strong fluorescence. ibid.
Paris 1896 and Henri Becquerel was investigating whether there was a relationship between fluorescence and the newly discovered X-Rays ... Uranium was spontaneously emitting its own radiation ... Becquerel’s rays were christened radioactivity. ibid.
A new phrase entered the language: nuclear fission. ibid.
Might a chain reaction be possible? ... In 1942 in a squash court in Chicago Enrico Fermi built a small mountain of uranium and graphite to try to find out ... He could only hope that the chain reaction would start before his pile went through the ceiling. ibid.
Now at last they found a use for uranium. It was a cataclysmic start. ibid.
In 1956 Calder Hall in Cumbria became the world’s first nuclear-powered reactor. ibid.
Uranium is not limitless. The total known reserves are about two and a half million tons, and most of that will be gone by the year 2000. ibid.
It has to be uranium. And there’s only one type, one isotope – U-235 - that’s useful. Yet in any uranium bar the U-235 makes less than 1%; the remainder is the non-fissile U-238. ibid.
99% of all the uranium mined is unused. ibid.
Conventional nuclear reactors are not the answer to our energy needs. They’re too greedy. ibid.
The price has rocketed ... 70% of the Western world’s known resources are found in just four countries. The USA has the biggest share, but it’s probably less than their own needs. Then South Africa, most of whose reserves are in Namibia. Australia with extensive untapped deposits. And Canada – Europe’s principle supplier. ibid.
There is some uranium everywhere. ibid.
There are undoubtedly hazards. After all uranium is a radioactive metal. The principle danger comes not from uranium itself but from its daughter products, particularly radon. ibid.
The man claims to have made one of the most remarkable breakthroughs of modern science. If he is right, then he has found a revolutionary new way to create a form of energy that could transform our world: it’s called Nuclear Fusion. Horizon: Cold Fusion: An Experiment to Change the World, BBC 1990
On 23rd March 1989 Professor Martin Fleischmann made the most extraordinary claim: that he and a colleague, Stanley Pons, had discovered a simple way of doing fusion that didn’t seem to cost the Earth: it was called Cold Fusion. ibid.
It was a way of turning sound into light ... It’s a process called Sonoluminescence. Seth Putterman called it the Star in a Jar. A tiny spot of bright light contained in a flask of liquid. This star in a jar is made when a soundwave is passed through a small bubble inside a flask of liquid. And this soundwave makes the bubble do something quite remarkable. First it expands, then it collapses, and this collapse happens so violently that vapour molecules trapped inside the bubble slam together and heat up so much that the bubble gives off an incredible burst of heat and light several thousand times a second. Giving the appearance of a star. ibid.
But then it came down to the biggest question of all: just how many neutrons did Seth Putterman record in his neutron detectors in the exact same billionth of a second as flashes of light? None at all. Our experiment failed to find any evidence of fusion. ibid.