Humanity is closer than ever before to a perpetual clean power source after a team of scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory successfully produced a nuclear fusion reaction resulting in a net energy gain. We now know one thing is possible, we can reach ignition.

Ten years after the nuclear disaster at Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant following the 3.11 megaquake and megatsunami, the once beautiful ‘satoyama’ landscape is now replaced by haphazardly spreading wilderness. The most conspicuous change may be in the local ecosystem.

During WWII the federal government took over the 60k acres of land known as, Tennessee’s Cumberland Plateau, turning it into a secret city where workers unknowingly were building the world's 1st atomic bomb. Today it’s known as the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where some believe that WWII was won.

August 29, 1949: four years after the U.S. drops the first atomic bomb, the Soviets test one. No one expected it so soon. Behind the scenes of this major event which started the Cold War, Soviet Secret Intelligence developed one of the most massive mole networks of the twentieth century.

Newly declassified MI5 files reveal the story of the female spy - Ursula Kuczynski, a Jewish German refugee - who stole Britain’s atomic secrets and gave them to the Soviets.

The Japanese Super Code reveals the US efforts to crack Japan’s unbreakable WW2 code following the horror of the attack on Pearl Harbour. But can one Naval Officer with a penchant for crosswords really stop the Japanese onslaught and turn the War in the Pacific in America’s favor?

October 1962: The Cuban missile crisis. The world holds its breath under the imminent threat of a nuclear war. Behind the scenes of the most harrowing days of the Cold War, one of the greatest spies of the century plays a crucial role to help Kennedy stand up to Khrushchev.

The decisions of only a handful of individuals determined the course of the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl. What transpired over a few hours would have an impact on the local community, Russia, Europe and the globe.

The Cold War was won not by weapons of war, but blue jeans, silk stockings, and fast food. Just follow the money.

Chernobyl nuclear disaster was the biggest technological accident in human history. Almost 35 years later, we go back to ground zero to the ghost city of Pripyat in northern Ukraine with survivors of the disaster.

Our focus for this chilling but fascinating episode is when humans are a serious danger to themselves through nuclear and industrial accidents. We'll look at the Fukushima and Chernobyl nuclear disasters, the Bhopal gas accident, the Savar Plaza building collapse and the BP oil spill.

TEPCO's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant is the site of one of history's worst nuclear disasters: the meltdown of three nuclear reactors. The decommissioning program in Japan learns from the Three Mile Island decommissioning in the US after the nuclear plant accident in 1976 in Pennsylvania.

The Fukushima nuclear disaster is one of the worst cases of radioactive contamination in history. Even now, three years later, few details are available as to how such a massive release of radioactive materials occurred. This documentary attempts to get to the bottom of the mystery.

The Cuban Missile Crisis was one of the defining moments of the mid-twentieth century and of the presidency of John Kennedy. How did the two Cold War powers of the USSR and the USA come to the point of threatening nuclear war?

30 years after the Chernobyl catastrophe, and 5 years after Fukushima, it is time to see what has been happening in the “exclusion zones”, where the radioactivity rate is far above normal.

The Koursk, a missile-carrying nuclear submarine, was the pride of the Russian navy. No one expected problems with such a sophisticated vessel. But on August 12th, 2000, everything and everyone aboard the Koursk would plummet to the bottom of the Barents Sea.

Scientists at the "Centre for Existential Risk" grapple with the unprecedented number of planetary threats facing humanity, from runaway AI and cyber attacks to bioterror and nuclear war.

During the Cold War, the superpowers mobilized thousands of spies and spotters to acquire the enemy’s secrets.

Dean Reed’s story is the story of a wild and changing world. Through the prism of his life, we witness global youth rebellion, revolutions in popular music, and the shifting tectonics of superpower rivalry.

Quantum physics? Theoretical physicist Brian Greene helps you understand its origins and its impact on today's world.

Leaps of imagination. Extraordinary experiments. Maverick geniuses. This is the story of our quest to master nature’s most mysterious force.

The story picks up where we left off last time, with Einstein writing the president of his new homeland, the United States, urging him to build a nuclear weapon before Hitler. This is the tale of the most destructive force humans have ever unleashed. The Atomic Bomb.

How did we get here? Well, in terms of Atomic Chemistry, Hank takes us on a tour of the folks that were part of the long chain of other folks who helped us get to these deeper understandings of the world.