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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nuclear Secrets | 1/2 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Secrets | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T07:38:46.972057+00:00 | kb-cron |
Nuclear Secrets, aka Spies, Lies and the Superbomb, is a 2007 BBC Television docudrama series which looks at the race for nuclear supremacy from the Manhattan Project through to Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme.
== Production == The series was produced by the BBC in co-production with National Geographic Society and NDR (Norddeutscher Rundfunk).
== Episodes ==
=== Episode one: The Spy From Moscow === "Soviet Colonel Oleg Penkosky spied in the build-up to the gravest nuclear crisis of all time, when the world came close to annihilation." In 1960, Soviet Military Intelligence Officer Oleg Penkovsky passes a letter offering to share secrets with the U.S. Government to American students visiting Moscow, but Washington fails to respond. Penkovsky later passes a letter to British Trade Delegation representative Greville Wynne warning that Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev was planning an all-out nuclear attack. Penkovsky meets with MI6 officer Harry Shergold and Central Intelligence Agency agent Joe Bulik a short time later on a trip to London and warns that the Soviets have been arming Cuba. Penkovsky is instructed to gather info on missile strategy and is given British industrial secrets to help maintain his cover upon his return to Moscow. Chief Marshall Sergei Varentsov tells Penkovsky of plans to deploy battlefield nuclear weapons in Berlin. Penkovsky passes this along with other secrets that hardens U.S. President John F. Kennedy's stance against Khrushchev. KGB Lt-Gen Gribanov begins a surveillance sweep of Western embassy staff in Moscow, including Penkovsky's contact Janet Chisholm. Wynne returns to Moscow to make contact and Penkovsky requests that he and his family are pulled out. CIA Chief John McCone agrees but needs info on Cuba first. Penkovsky learns of the deployment of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba but he is hospitalised before he can pass on the info. US surveillance photos reveal the build-up of missiles in Cuba that are identified from the materials previously supplied by Penkovsky. Penkovsky is arrested and confesses to Gribanov before signalling the Americans of an imminent Soviet attack in what Bulik suspects is an attempt to initiate a U.S. strike on Moscow. Penkovsky is convicted of spying and executed. At about 36:17 a map of Europe and the USSR is presented, which incorrectly shows Russia at its post-1991 borders instead of the Soviet Union in 1962.
==== Cast ====
=== Episode two: Superspy === "1945, America prepares to unleash the most destructive weapon ever seen... a weapon of mass murder created by men of genius, but one is a communist spy." In 1944, Prof. Rudolf Peierls and his assistant Klaus Fuchs are summoned to Los Alamos National Laboratory to work on the Manhattan Project. Fuchs was a German refugee who had joined the Communist Party of Germany in 1932 to oppose the rise of Adolf Hitler and was now a Soviet spy. Project mastermind Robert Oppenheimer only had enough uranium 235 for one bomb and Peierls and Fuchs were brought in to work on weaponising plutonium. Cut off from his Soviet handlers Fuchs throws himself into his work until he is allowed to visit his sister, Kristel, in Cambridge, Massachusetts where he re-establishes contact. The Soviet head of atomic research Igor Kurchatov monitors the American progress through Fuchs. Following Nazi surrender Fuchs fears the weapon will be used against the USSR. Fuchs passes the details of the plutonium bomb, Fat Man, to his Soviet contact, Raymond. The project's tests are successful and the uranium bomb, Little Boy, is dropped on Hiroshima while Piles and Fuchs's Fatman is dropped on Nagasaki. In the aftermath Soviet premier Joseph Stalin orders Lavrentiy Beria to construct a Soviet plutonium bomb based on the Fatman plans supplied by Fuchs. Recalled to England, his adopted home, Fuchs returns with the nuclear secrets the U.S. is no longer willing to share. Fuchs passes the American secrets to the British as well. Fuchs begins to doubt Stalin's actions and decides to stop spying for Soviets, but it is too late as the Soviet Union detonates Joe 1. FBI agent Robert Lamphere identifies Fuchs from decoded Soviet signals and MI5 commence surveillance. British security officer Henry Arnold coaxes a confession out of Fuchs who admits to having spied for the Soviets since 1941. Fuchs was convicted of espionage and sentenced to 14 years in prison.
==== Cast ====