BBC - Nuclear Secrets Set One (2007) Part 3 Superbomb

At present the total nuclear arsenal of the world is no less than 27,000 nuclear warheads. Nine countries in the world (probably) have nuclear weapons and a dozen more have access to the resources and technology needed to produce such a weapon. Nuclear Secrets is a series of spy thrillers exploring the key turning-points in the race for nuclear supremacy. Despite being an ally during World War II, the Soviet Union launched an all-out espionage effort to uncover the military and defense secrets of the United States and Britain in the 1940s. As the top-secret plan to build the bomb, called the Manhattan Project, took shape in the United States, the Soviet spy ring got wind of it before the FBI knew of the secret program's existence. The Atomic Spy Ring was established by the Soviet Union during World War II and included some of the best known names in the world of espionage. Barely four years after the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan in August 1945, the Soviet Union detonated its own at the Semipalatinsk Test Site in Kazakhstan in August 1949, much sooner that expected. The race to build the hydrogen bomb took the world to the edge of apocalypse. It set off a real-life action thriller to control the most powerful force on the planet. This prestigious BBC series using dramatized reconstructions and CIA and KGB archives reveals the true story of the race for nuclear power, from the creation of the A-bomb to the present day market in military secrets across the world.

Part 3 Superbomb

Two superpowers, one goal – the race for nuclear supremacy follows the Soviet Union and USA as they struggle to control the most powerful force on the planet and create a “superbomb” that could unleash an explosion 1,000 times greater than Hiroshima. In April 1946, nuclear scientist Edward Teller, who has become known as the father of the hydrogen bomb, arrived at Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory to chair a secret conference on the most ambitious weapons project the world had ever seen the creation of a “superbomb”. Having met initial opposition from his boss, the father of the atomic bomb, Robert Oppenheimer, Teller believed he could build the ultimate weapon. In Kew Gardens in 1947, a secret rendezvous took place. Soviet Alexander Felisov met his contact who handed over intelligence regarding Teller's H-bomb. Unknown to Teller, his weapons programme had been infiltrated by a Soviet husband-and-wife team – “the volunteers”. By 1951, Teller had made the breakthrough he craved when he tested the H-Bomb in Eniwetok Atoll, in the Pacific. For 15 minutes, he waited anxiously to discover that the island had vanished and, in its place, was a crater, two miles wide. While Teller triumphed in the US, the Soviets were desperate to develop a small bomb that could be dropped by a plane. Chief Scientist Andrei Sakharov was successful in developing this. Teller discovered what the Soviets were doing and secretly joined the FBI as an informant; he accused his contemporary, Robert Oppenheimer, of not acting in the interests of the US and destroyed his reputation with a powerful testimony. But it was too late. The Soviets now held the secret to wiping out any city in Europe. Doomsday was now just around the corner…

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