Uranium: Twisting the Dragon's Tail

Born from an exploding star, uranium was named after the then-current discovery of the planet Uranus, and was originally dismissed as worthless. Hosted by physicist Dr. Derek Muller, filmmakers Wayne Fimeri and Steve Westh's two-part PBS-aired documentary exploring this mysterious mineral takes viewers back to the turn-of-the-20th-century, when Marie and Pierre Curie enthralled the world with the "glow in the dark" properties of radium, which was quickly celebrated by outsiders as a miraculous cure-all (Marie Curie and many others would later die from complications brought on by radiation exposure). Uranium is capable of releasing a burst of energy in a chain reaction when its atom is split. H.G. Wells would coin the term "atomic bomb" in his futuristic 1914 novel The World Set Free, followed a few decades later by disturbing rumors that Nazi Germany was trying to harness atomic power in its quest for world domination. America would play catch-up in its "big science" Manhattan Project. Muller here visits the now desolate Trinity site, where the bombs were tested that would later be dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, bringing an end to WWII at the cost of many lives while also causing acute radiation sickness in survivors, as well as setting off a perilous race for nuclear supremacy. In the second part of the documentary, Muller looks at the paradox of uranium—namely, its peaceful potentials in medical use and clean energy—while also taking a sobering journey to the site of Russia's Chernobyl nuclear accident (researchers can only visit for brief periods), dropping in at an abandoned U.S. Titan missile site, and stopping at towns around Japan's Fukishima reactors. Although the film sometimes strays off message, it ultimately delivers a powerful reminder about a sleeping dragon: the "measured risk" of using uranium. Highly recommended. Aud: H, C, P. (S. Rees)