The 1920s and ’30s were the golden age of nuclear research. The largest known nucleus at the time was that of the uranium atom: 238 protons and neutrons. Nova: Einstein’s Big Idea II, PBS 2005
Plutonium was the first man-made element. Nova: Hunting the Elements II, PBS 2012
Irrefutable and undeniable. The New York Times
cf.
There is no evidence that Mr Hussein tried to buy uranium in Africa. The New York Times article Joseph Wilson, What I Didn’t Find in Africa
The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. George W Bush
The Soviets left their backyard in a mess after mining uranium in Kyrgyzstan for their nuclear weapons programme; there has been little cleaning up since. Simon Reeve: Holidays in the Danger Zone: Meet the Stans: Kazakhstan & Kyrgyzstan, BBC 2003
Legends say there is a world beneath this one where a dragon lies sleeping. They say be careful how you wake the dragon. Uranium: Twisting the Dragon’s Tail I: The Rock that Became a Bomb, PBS 2015
Around the turn of the twentieth century uranium is almost unknown. It is basically worthless. But then in forty years – just a single generation – it becomes the most desirable and terrifying rock on earth. This is uranium. ibid.
Uranium makes the modern world. Uranium is a dream of clean limitless power or a nightmare of a silent and poisoned earth. ibid.
Crackling with the energy of that exploding star. ibid.
Henri [Becquerel] has found a strange unknown energy and it’s coming from inside the uranium. ibid.
The only way to get uranium is to process uranium ore. In fact it takes seven tons to make just one gram of radium. ibid.
Uranium is a shapeshifter and it does this naturally. ibid.
This sickness is something the world has never seen before. ibid.
Uranium promised a new age … We could harness the nuclear dragon. Uranium: Twisting the Dragon’s Tail II: The Rock that Changed the World
There are still more than 16,000 nuclear weapons in the world today. ibid.
We had seen the clothing of the firemen of Chernobyl. ibid.
The half-life of Uranium 238 is 4.5 billion years. ibid.
What do you know about yellow-cake? What about Niger? The office of the Vice-President has received a report concerning a memorandum of sale between the government of Niger and Iraq for the purchase of 500 tons of yellow-cake uranium ore. Fair Game 2010 starring Naomi Watts & Sean Penn & Noah Emmerich & Ty Burrell & Sam Shepard & Bruce McGill & Brooke Smith & Michael Kelly & Liraz Charhi & Khaled el Nabawy & Anand Tiwari & David Denman, director Doug Liman, CIA bloke to Joseph Wilson
This film is about atomic power … 1) Anyone with an expert knowledge of physics can make an atomic bomb with that much of a substance called plutonium; 2) A speck of plutonium causes cancer; 3) There is no absolutely safe way of storing, protecting or transporting plutonium. And you may have read recently that enough plutonium to make fifteen atomic bombs has officially disappeared from nuclear research centres in Britain. John Pilger, An Unjustifiable Risk, ITV 1977
The first commercial nuclear power station fuelled by plutonium; the first of many so-called fast-breeder reactors that will solve all our energy problems, according to the salesmen of our nuclear industry. ibid.
Nuclear power: What I learned by hard experience was it wasn’t cheap … It isn’t safe … and it isn’t peaceful, most important of all … Plutonium that had come out of our civil power stations was going to America to go to make warheads … The cost of the nuclear power programme was really fraudulent … They never compared like with like … the decommissioning costs … all these ongoing costs have still to be borne … Tony Benn, Against the Tide, Youtube 53.24
Throughout the 1990s North Korea was secretly mining raw uranium within their own borders. North Korea: Dark Secrets, History 2019
I think it’s made out of that Jurillium stuff. The Hot Potato 2011 starring Ray Winstone & Colm Meaney & Jack Huston & Dave Harewood & John Lynch & Derren Nesbitt & Lois Winstone et al, director Tim Lewiston, Kenny
Plutonium was transported down the highways and byways of Britain … carried in a sealed drum lashed to the back of a lorry. Equinox: A Very British Bomb, Channel 4 1991
Nova had asked this 20-year-old chemistry student at a famous university in Boston to attempt the design. Nova: The Plutonium Connection, PBS 1975
Steal the material, make an atom bomb, and you’d have a blackmail weapon no government could afford to ignore. ibid.
Buried in the stacks of any good science library in the country and probably in the world is a vast amount of information needed for designing a bomb. ibid.