Fissionline 70

FISSIONLINE

IS IS THIS PROOF WE ARE NOT ALONE?

1946 picture that sparked UFO phenomenon

Could 'freak" A-Bomb image signal the arrival of aliens who came to " save " Mankind from itself?

By Alan Rimmer

Are aliens responsible for preventing humanity from descending into a nuclear war? Did life forms from distant stars interfere with early nuclear bomb tests?

As unlikely as it sounds, this intriguing image suggests that such a bizarre notion may well be true.

Taken on July 1st, 1946, the photo shows the mushroom cloud of Test Able, the fourth A-Bomb explosion and the first after after WW2.

Thousands of photos were taken of the shot, but this one was different in that it was the only one to show a strange cone-shaped light emanating from the head of the huge cloud Military analysts were puzzled by the strange phenomenon and could find n rational explanation The description on the back of the picture (inset) states:-

"It shows the cone of light spreading fanwise towards the lagoon from below the mushroom head -- the reason for the light is unknown for no person witnessed the "cone" actually during the test " They later ordered it to be withdrawn pending further investigations

But not before it was picked up by a photo agency and its unique features highlighted But because there was no obvious explanation, it was dismissed as a "freak," and filed away.

It next saw the light of day in the early 1980s when a researcher investigating stories of UFO sightings chanced upon it in the files of a Fleet Street newspaper

The researcher was investigating alleged connections between UFO sightings and ABomb test sites As far as we know, the picture has never been published before and only came to light during esearches urrently being ndertaken into issionline's xtensive rchives 's discovery pookily oincides with ensational new vidence from arious US Government fficials who elieve that lien space raft visited arth soon after he first Aomb explosions to

"save" mankind from destruction. Edgar Mitchell, who was part of the Apollo 14 mission to the moon, gained notoriety with the dissemination of various conspiracy theories since his return from the moon in 1971.

Mitchell, the sixth man to set foot on the moon, admitted to being convinced of the existence of aliens and extensively spoke about claims that aliens have visited Earth. Mitchell also discussed nuclear bomb testing facilities in New Mexico. He said: "These testing grounds for atomic weapons were what the extraterrestrials were interested in They wanted to know about our military capabilities My conversations with people in the military and intelligence community showed that the extraterrestrials were attempting to keep us from going to war and help us achieve peace on Earth "

Last month an ex-CIA agent backed up the claims saying that aliens will reveal themselves in just a few years

John Ramirez, who worked with the elusive government agency for many years, told a Congressional hearing that all the talk of the discovery of UFOs and accusations of a cover-up were merely a way to get people ready for the big reveal. And, he said, that this big reveal will come in 2027 The Test Able picture came before "flying saucers" had been thought of The first wellknown UFO sighting occurred in 1947, when businessman Kenneth Arnold claimed to see a group of nine high-speed objects near Mount Rainier in Washington while flying his small plane

Arnold estimated the speed of the crescentshaped objects as several thousand miles per hour and said they moved “like crescent discs skipping on water.” In the newspaper report that followed, it was mistakenly stated that the objects were saucer-shaped, hence the term flying saucer.

So could the mysterious cone of light emanating from the mushroom cloud of Test Able indicate "alien interference?" There is no doubt that something went very wrong which

continues to puzzle scientists to this day

More than 42,000 servicemen were involved in the test which saw scores of derelict wartime ships arrayed in a target pattern in Bikini lagoon.

At the centre, the 'bullseye' was the American carrier the Nevada, its deck painted bright orange to provide an easy target for the bombadier aboard Dave's Dream, the Silverplate B-29 bomber chosen to carry out the mission. The planning for the operation had been meticulous, nothing had been left to chance, especially as hundreds of newsmen from organisations all over the globe, including the Soviet Union, had been invited to witness this awesome demonstration of American might

To the dismay of the Americans the planned spectacular was a huge flop Instead of landing on its target, Test Able exploded nearly a mile off course and the expected fireworks just didn't materialise. When the smoke had cleared very few ships appeared to be damaged and to add to the embarrassment several goats tethered to the decks of some of the ships appeared to have not only survived the blast, but carried on munching away at some straw they had been fed as a last meal

One disappointed reporter described the noise of the explosion as "a discreet belch", while a watching US Congressman compared it to a "giant firecracker "

Most of the media returned home to file reports about the "Atomic Dud"; the American military were a laughing stock

So what went wrong? An immediate inquest was ordered and every detail of the operation was forensically examined. The result?

Nothing was found. The luckless crew of Dave's Dream were judged to have followed the bombing procedures to the letter

Typical 'normal' image of Test Able

Examination of the bomb sight on the plane yielded nothing untoward. The weather was perfect so that couldn't be blamed. Optical illusions were also ruled out as well as sunshine effects because of the bomb's position in the sky. There were even suggestions that the plane's bombsight had been deliberately sabotaged by crew members irked at being left out of being on the plane for the bomb drop But nothing definitive was ever proved and the Americans quickly moved on to the next shot, codenamed Baker, second in the series of tests known as Operation Crossroads Test Baker, exploded in 100-feet of water directly below the target ships, was a huge success and provided the world with some of the most dramatic pictures ever taken of an atomic explosion.

But as the huge American atomic bomb test programme continued, observers began to notice dramatic incidents where unknown craft appeared over the facilities and nobody knew where they were from or what they were doing there

Journalists and researchers have studied the UFO-nuclear connection for more than 30 years and have gathered a mass of documentation from filing Freedom of Information Act requests to the departments of defense and energy.

“There seems to be a lot of correlation there,” reported Lue Elizondo, who from 2007 to 2012 served as director of a covert team of UFO researchers operating inside the Department of Defense

The program, called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), received $22 million of the Pentagon’s $600 billion budget in 2012, The New York Times reported. Nuclear-adjacent sightings go back decades, says Robert Hastings, a UFO researcher and author of the book UFOs and Nukes: Extraordinary Encounters at Nuclear Weapons Sites Hastings says he’s interviewed more than 160 veterans who have witnessed strange things in the skies around nuclear sites

“You have objects being tracked on radar performing at speeds that no object on earth can perform,” Hastings says “You have eyewitness

military personnel You have jet pilots ”

Witnesses to these incidents are often highly trained personnel with top security clearances. In recent years, their reports are being corroborated by sophisticated technology.

In late 1948, green fireballs were reported in the skies near atomic laboratories in Los Alamos and Sandia, New Mexico, where the atomic bomb was first developed and tested A declassified document from 1950 mentions “flying saucers” measuring almost 50 feet in diameter near the Los Alamos labs

And Knapp has interviewed more than a dozen workers from the Nevada desert atomic test site, where scores of A-bombs were detonated in the post-WWII years.

He says they told him UFO activity was so commonplace there, employees were assigned to monitor the activity.

In the 1960s and ’70s, repeated UFO sightings emerged at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, a storage site for nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). At one such alleged sighting in 1967, former Air Force Capt. Robert Salas says several of those missiles became inoperative at the same time base security reported seeing a glowing red object, about 30 feet in diameter, hovering over the facility

Salas, who commanded ICBMs as a launch officer and later worked in the aerospace industry and at the Federal Aviation Administration, told CNN the “missiles began going into what's called a ‘no-go condition,’ or un-launchable. Observers can only speculate about the origin of these unexplained phenomena.

But the repeated proximity to sensitive defence sites connected to the world's most powerful weapons has raised the question of whether they might originate from adversaries known or unknown

Who knows? But our picture of the "freak" Test Able explosion may one day turn out to be the first real indication that we are really not alone in this universe.

Fury over Fukushima Discharges

The operators of Japan's stricken Fukushima power plant have finally started discharging treated wastewater, after months of trying to placate concerned parties and staunch opposition from local fishermen..

In a live video from a control room at the plant, a staff member turned on a seawater pump to begin flushing out the contaminated waste

There are 1 4 million tonnes of wastewater stored in large containers, which had been used to cool three melted nuclear reactors destroyed when a powerful tsunami struck the region in 2011..

The plant's operators, TEPCO, said it was running out of room, and needed to discharge the

water to allow the clean-up to continue

Some 500,000 litres-a-day of treated wastewater will eventually be discharged into the Pacific Ocean, through an underwater pipe that extends a kilometre from the Japanese mainland.

Japanese authorities have vowed the water will not harm the health of local people, marine life, or the environment, which will be released only after passing through an intense filtration system and verified as safe.

It secured the backing if the United Nation's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, which stated that environmental damage would be “negligible ”

Local fishermen have accused TEPCO of breaking a promise in 2015 that it would not dispose of treated water without gaining the understanding of those concerned.

Environmental activists have also launched a last-ditch complaint to the UN's Human Rights commission China has led a campaign against the release, calling it "extremely selfish and irresponsible"

China has banned all imports of all aquatic products originating from Japan. Customs authorities said in a statement."We will continue to pay attention to the situation of the discharge of nuclear contaminated water into the sea in Japan, and adjust relevant regulatory measures," they added

June Robinson was proud of her tall handsom

One fateful day he

By June Robinson

Where the heck was Christmas Island! And what on earth were they going to do there? All Allan was told was that it was in the middle of the Pacific and he was going to help build an airfield He set off on

Christmas Eve from Southampton We tried to write every day and I still have bundles of his letters I don’t know what Allan knew, if anything, about what was about to happen, but mail stopped for a few weeks in April and shortly afterwards there was a report in one of the newspapers that Britain had exploded an H-bomb on an island in the Pacific

To say I was shocked was an understatement. I was an avid reader and had read about Hiroshima I knew of the terrible consequences of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 and could not imagine how they could test this Hbomb with so many men on the island I was really worried When Allan wrote he didn’t say much about the bomb. During that year they tested two Abombs and two more H-bombs. Allan said the men watched the blasts from the beach stripped to the waist They felt the heat from the bombs going right through their bodies and could see the bones through their hands like X-rays.

Allan was most impressed by the sight

Buchanan Street in 1957. Then he was called up with the Sappers in Catterick.

of the mushroom clouds in the air and the terrible, terrifying noise

Allan and some blokes were sent to the blast sites to clear the area of dead sea birds and fish thrown up from the sea All the time on the island they ate the fish they caught and swam daily in the sea. After the first H-bomb was exploded, it rained very heavily and the boys were soaked to the skin. Some of the boys had burns on their bodies and skin conditions, and had to go to the tent hospital. One of the boys was found dead in his tent quite soon after the blast and his body was quickly taken away

Flown Back

Allan was flown back to the UK via San Francisco, and eventually came out of the Army in June 1959 We married two weeks later He jokingly told me that the men had been kidded that their wives would have babies with crocodile skin. I didn’t find it very funny.

It took me four years to persuade Allan to start a family, and when I had a healthy baby boy, he wouldn’t even discuss having more children. Over the years Allan had various skin rashes and eczema in his inner ear, which drove him crazy Just before his 48th birthday in November 1983, he complained of a painful back and was sent for an X-ray and blood test Later he was told to report to the hospital because they had “found an ulcer in the colon.”

On the day of the operation I casually asked the doctor how long Allan had had the ulcer. He looked me straight in the eye and said: ‘Mrs Robinson, it is not an ulcer, it is a tumour.’ My mind went completely blank I knew what a tumor was and I knew the implications I walked home in a daze I felt like a zombie

He was operated on in March and all seemed well The doctors said the tumour had been removed and the surrounding area cleared All was well for the next couple of years and we went on holiday to

Paris for Allan’s 50th birthday But he suddenly didn’t feel well and when we returned home he was sent to hospital for a Cat scan

He was later taken for another operation The surgeon later phoned me and said he wanted to speak to me in his office. I knew in my heart what he was going to tell me. The surgeon said he had removed more growths , but there was no hope. He gave Allan no more than six months to live... Nights were the worst. Some nights we didn’t sleep at all. It seemed as though our huge double bed was a raft adrift on a terrifying, dark, stormy sea. When it came it was almost a relief

He had been in terrible pain and was given an injection He lapsed into a coma and soon he was dead Allan really didn’t look too bad at last And now at least he was at peace

I do believe in God and I felt that Allan’s spirit had gone to a better place. At the time an awful lot of other veterans were complaining about ill health and I joined the fight for compensation. I met Ken McGinley who was leading the fight and went with five other widows all dressed in black to the Ministry of Defence I applied for a war widows but was turned down

In 1988 America admitted radiation negligence for 15 different cancers in nuclear veterans, and President Reagan said anyone who witnessed the tests and had been damaged in any way should not have to go to court to fight their country.

The spectacle of the British government fighting British ex-servicemen with the same determination it shows to enemies of the country is disgraceful. Now they've got the cheek to offer us a medal! I am 86 years old but the thought of that makes my blood boil with anger.

Allan was a man of few words but I know exactly what he would say if he was still alive. He would tell the Ministry of Defence exactly what they could do with their medal

me fiance Allan as they walked down Glasgow's p to National Service and found himself training e was told he was being sent to Christmas Island..

From Ken McGinley President British Nuclear Tests

Veterans' Association

did you don t really expect to meet anyone from your home town. You are sent somewhere and that's it. So I was pleasantly surprised when I was sent to a camp in Ripon, Yorkshire, to find my old school pal Frank Murney had been sent there as well.

We grew up together, went to school together and both of us had been employed as van boys But that was just the start of it For very soon I was joined by Jim McGlynn, John Ferns, Hawthorn Wilson and George Cunningham, all school pals who had grown up together and had been in the same class at St Margaret's school in Johnstone! Coincidence? Maybe. But it became increasingly less likely after I was sent to Christmas Island to discover that almost every boy in my class had been sent there as well

I found out that at least 21 boys from my school were sent to the island, and we all lived in a half mile radius of each other For a small town like Johnstone, I found this amazing

The fact that I subsequently found out that many of my pals were suffering from cancers and other illnesses, was one of the main reasons I set up the British Nuclear Test Veterans' Association.

I saw many of my pals die of terrible diseases which they were convinced was caused by radiation picked up on Christmas Island I vowed to fight for justice for them and the thousands of other nuclear servicemen who suffered similar fates, and it grieves me to see

what has happened to the association since I stepped down from the chairmanship in 1999. The movement has been reduced to a spineless bunch of squabbling infants relying almost exclusively on the government for cash for junkets and museums and other memorials to 'honour' the veterans, instead of fighting for them

y they have sucked up to politicians and the Ministry of Defence for the sake of a useless "commemorative" medal makes me sick.

The Ministry of Defence are laughing up their sleeves at the veterans. And you only have to look at the likes of one of their political placemen, Lord Robotham, to see the contempt the MoD holds for Britain's nuclear veterans

This former SAS soldier and hard man made no bones about what he thought of the veterans when he disparaged them in the following terms in a speech in the Lords on July 20th:-

"Please let’s respect those who did their work...in the South Pacific, but please let us not be lead down a blind alley by people who for some reason believed that they were harmed when actually they were doing their duty but were not harmed."

This speech shows Lord Robotham has not changed one bit from when he was the junior minister for veterans a dozen years ago

Meeting with a delegation of nuclear veterans who had gone to him for help Mr Robotham, according to one of the delegation "practically threw us out of his office..."

In passing, I would like to remind Lord Robotham that many of his contemporaries from the British officer class came to the BNTVA with complaints about their own ill health after serving on Christmas Island. We were able to help them in winning pensions and, more importantly, we were able to assist their widows, when they passed away

The Fissionline Project

The Fissionline Project was formed with the aim of bringing the “most important people living” to the attention of the world. The term was coined by Robert H. Holmes, Director of the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission in Hiroshima to describe the survivors of the atomic bomb strike who were afflicted by radiation sickness and illnesses passed on to unborn children, and those yet to be conceived. Our unique archive collected over 40 years of research. includes health records, service information, death certificates, photographs, videos, declassified documents, personal letters and other ephemera, as well as hundreds of personal accounts from the men who took part in nuclear bomb tests and radiation industries. We plan to present this invaluable resource in a graphic and easy to understand format so that it can be readily accessed by all sections of the community, young and old, academic and non-academic.The threat of nuclear war has been an omniscient presence ever since 1945. Our mission is to help prevent this madness before it is too late. We are an independent, non-profitmaking organisation set up for the common good.

If you want to join us, or think you can help contact: Alan Rimmer, Fissionline editor

fissionline@gmail.com

The reporter who got the scoop of the century

In early May 1945, U S Army Major General Leslie R Groves visited the New York Times offices on West 43rd Street to talk with managing editor Edwin James. After he and Groves had conferred, James called science reporter William L Laurence into his office Groves said he wanted Laurence to work on a vital wartime task Sure, Laurence said, what was the job? Groves would say only that for the duration, Laurence would be detached from the Times, working in absolute secrecy. No one would know where he was or what he was doing.“If this is about the atomic bomb, I need to see everything,” the newsman replied, looking the general in the eye “I need to go to the labs and plants in Oak Ridge and New Mexico and Washington State. I’m the kind of reporter who has to have firsthand knowledge and access.” Groves, who headed the Manhattan Project, a secret Army Corps of Engineers program named for the New York borough where it began, didn’t flinch “You’ll go to all those places, Mr Laurence,” he said.“And much farther.” Laurence, who recognized the significance of atomic energy long before any of his colleagues did, had been on the story from its beginnings.

At a Columbia University conference in February 1939 he learned the military potential of an atomic “chain reaction.”

Immediately Laurence became an atomic harbinger, warning anyone who would listen what it would mean if Nazi Germany got the ultimate weapon Laurence’s warnings went largely ignored, even after his extensive feature headlined “Vast Power Source in Atomic Energy Opened by Science” ran on May 5, 1940.

Groves approached Laurence because Laurence knew the subject, because he wrote for the

nation’s newspaper of record and because letting Bill Laurence in on America’s biggest secret was the easiest way to put a leash on a tenacious reporter.

A Lithuanian immigrant who fled Russia in 1905, Laurence graduated from Harvard Law School before becoming a reporter In an article published in September 1940, “The Atom Gives Up,” he foresaw the awesome potential of harnessing atomic energy. Laurence’s article was so alarmingly prescient that in 1943, General Groves ordered that anyone borrowing the article from a library be reported to him. Noted scientist Edward Adler ended up on the “suspect” list after checking out the article to learn more about gaseous diffusion Laurence witnessed key historic moments, including the Trinity test near Alamogordo on July 16, 1945. He was upset that he was forced to remain twenty miles away from Ground Zero but drafted his own obituary just in case.

Among his notes, he described Edward Teller applying sunscreen to prepare for the blast.

Laurence was also on Tinian Island in the Pacific for the departure and return of the Enola Gay from its mission over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. He commissioned Robert Lewis, co-pilot of the Enola Gay, to write a log of the flight. At the last minute, Laurence was allowed on The Great Artiste, the instrument plane that accompanied Bockscar on its mission to drop “Fat Man” over Nagasaki on August 9, 1945

Laurence was later awarded a Pulitzer Prize along with many other accolades for his achievements. Nicknamed by his New York Times colleagues “Atomic Bill,” Laurence continued to write about the potential of atomic energy until his death in 1977

"Atomic Bill" Laurence

Nuclear Matters

Ukrainian authorities have ordered a mandatory evacuation of children from two districts of the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region that are under persistent shelling by the Russians.

Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk told Ukrainian television that evacuation from the Vasylivskyi and Pologivskyi districts is now mandatory. Altogether more than 50 civilians are still thought to live in the districts. There was also a compulsory evacuation of a community in the Kupiansk district of Kharkiv region, which has seen intense Russian bombardments in recent weeks And in Donetsk region, "89 children from 11 settlements are being evacuated, and today the process is underway," Vereshchuk said.

Russia has threatened nuclear retaliation if Ukraine mounts a successful counteroffensive.

Ex-president Dmitry Medvedev, who is deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, warned of “global nuclear fire” if Kyiv forces and Nato seized any Russian land. He hit out after an alleged Ukrainian drone attack on Moscow with two crashing into offices just close to the Kremlin, shaking the financial district of the city

The strikes temporarily shut down Vnukovo international airport, but no fatalities were reported but photos from the scene show damaged windows at the corner of the buildings, with debris scattered on the ground

below

Moscow blamed the attack on Ukraine but Kyiv officials have not taken responsibility

Medvedev said: “Imagine if the offensive, which is backed by NATO, was a success and they tore off a part of our land then we would be forced to use a nuclear weapon according to the rules of a decree from the president of Russia.

“There would simply be no other option. So our enemies should pray for our warriors’ success They are making sure that a global nuclear fire is not ignited ” Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky warned the “war is returning to the territory of Russia” after the drone attack

He said: “Today is the 522nd day of the socalled ‘Special Military Operation’, which the Russian leadership thought would last a couple of weeks. Gradually, the war is returning to the territory of Russia - to its symbolic centres and military bases, and this is an inevitable, natural and absolutely fair process.”

It came after Vladimir Putin said he did not dismiss the idea of peace talks following a meeting with African leaders in St Petersburg The Russian leader claimed a joint African and Chinese initiative could serve as a basis for finding peace

He told reporters: “The initiative, in my opinion, can be the basis of some processes aimed at the search for peace, the same as others, such as for example, the Chinese initiative.”

Putin said it was hard to implement a ceasefire when the Ukrainian army was on the offensive. Mr Zelensky has rejected the idea of a ceasefire now, saying it would leave Russia in control of nearly a fifth of his country and give its forces time to regroup after 17 grinding months of war

The world's first geological tomb for nuclear waste is rapidly taking shape more than 400 metres below the forests of Finland. Batches of lethally radioactive uranium will start arriving within two years for burial in the warren of tunnels carved into the bedrock

Forget Hollywood! Starts Today: The incredible true story ofthe trials and tribulations ofthe men and

women who really created the atomic bomb.

ALAN RIMMER

THE PRIVATE

LIFE OF THE ATOMIC BOMB

1. The woman who split the atom

CHAPTER ONE

Soon after the end of the second world war a triumphant U S President Harry S Truman was introduced to a diminutive Austrian woman at a glittering event in New York City On being told the woman’s name, he said in an awestruck voice: “So, you’re the little lady who got us into all of this!”

The ‘little lady’ was Lise Meitner, a 64-yr-old physicist who had fled Nazi Germany in 1939, and the ‘all of this’ was the atomic bomb Meitner was the reluctant genius who discovered fission, the process that led to the creation of the most destructive force on earth. She confounded her more illustrious, and exclusively male contemporaries, by identifying how uranium atoms could be split by firing electrically charged particles

called neutrons into its nucleus. She further showed that the process could begin a chain reaction releasing unimaginable amounts of energy

Scientists had been aware of the tremendous energy contained in the atom ever since Rutherford in 1911 Einstein had even calculated the amount of energy stored with his famous equation E=mc2. But no-one knew how to release it until Meitner carried out her experiments Her discovery offered the prospect of unlimited cheap energy But there was a darker side: it could also be harnessed to produce an atomic bomb The prospect of Hitler getting his hands on such a weapon terrified Meitner But when she was asked to join the Manhattan Project, the $2 billion plan to build the atomic bomb, she declared: "I will have nothing to do with a bomb!”

Unfortunately, she couldn’t escape the atomic genie she had helped release The attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought her unwanted press coverage To her immense annoyance, she was called "the mother of the bomb" and a false story was circulated around the world that she fled Germany with bomb blueprints in her purse This falsehood gained currency during her trip to the United States. She was enraged when during a lecture tour, she was asked to supervise production of a movie based called The Beginning or the End Meitner refused, stating that "I would rather walk naked down Broadway.” Her discovery of nuclear fission changed history and affects global politics to this day. But she had to endure many indignities and hardships before arriving at the position she now found herself in.

This most unusual woman was born on November 7th, 1878 the third of eight children of Phillip Meitner, one of the first Jewish lawyers in Vienna Meitner showed an early interest in science after being fascinated as a child by a puddle outside her home with a slick of oil on it. She wondered wh it showed suc lovely colours and was thrilled that such things existed in the world. By the age of eight her fascinatio with science had become all-consuming She hid maths and science books under her pillow at night and covered the crack beneath her door so that her parents wouldn’t stop her from studying past her bedtime. She idolised the French physicists Marie and Pierre Curie and yearned to follow in their footsteps. Marie Curie’s work particularly inspired Meitner to believe that a life in the sciences was possible for a woman.

But her ambitions came to a grinding halt at age 14 when she completed her basic education because Austrian law banned girls from

attending academic high schools which, by law, only prepared boys to attend universities. She begged her parents to find a way to continue her education but there was nothing they could do. The law was the law. For nine long years Meitner

most conservative, changed its approach to education It, albeit reluctantly, announced that universities would have to take in qualified women provided they could score high enough in tough entrance examinations. And it was made crystal clear that only the very best would do

languished in an educational limbo, her dream of becoming a physicist receding with each passing year. She later referred to them as the “lost years.”

But as the world approached a new century, a heady air of enlightenment gripped the academic world as universities in Paris and London threw open their doors to women Even the Austrian Government, one of Europe’s

Meitner took the hallenge very eriously She ersuaded her father o hire a private tutor o prepare her for the xaminations and ook on a whole raft f academic rinciples to ensure he made the grade he studied mathematics, hysics, psychology, reek, Latin and rench, as well as erman literature. Whatever spare time he had left was evoted to such isparate subjects as oology, botany, mineralogy and eligion, such was er hunger for nowledge. In less han two years Meitner covered nearly ten years’ worth off schoolwork. Her dedication paid off Out of 14 women who took the university entrance exam only four passed, and Meitner was one of them With her proud parents watching, she was enrolled in the University of Vienna in October 1900, aged 22, and soon entered the rarefied world of academia she so craved.

Marie Curie

By this time Germany was considered the scientific centre of the world. At the dawn of the 20th century it was vibrant and inquisitive, stimulating. provocative.

Berlin rivalled London and Paris as a centre of commerce, with bustling streets, electric trams and an underground railway system. But the sheer intellectual power of the people who inhabited its universities and centres of culture and art was even greater than its rivals

It was the home to famous Nobel Prizewinning physicists like Max Planck, Albert Einstein and Max von Laue, outriders of an enormously inventive century. The city was alive with the energy of new ideas and boundless possibilities. The whole world seemed to be changing for the better. Berlin’s great universities attracted a new generation and a remarkable intellectual revolution was underway

In 1907 Meitner travelled to Berlin to join this intoxicating revolution and enrolled at a study course with Max Planck, the father of quantum physics. At about the same time, another scientist arrived in Berlin. He had taken his degree in chemistry from the university of Marberg in Germany in 1903. Then, in

Montreal under Ernest Rutherford, he discovered several new radioactive substances. When he returned to Germany in 1906, he obtained a position as an assistant under Emil Fischer the great organic chemist at the university of Berlin. The new arrival’s name was Otto Hahn, and he was destined to have a profound effect on the impressionable Meitner

her She undoubtedly fell under Hahn’s spell and was probably the only man she ever loved. She wrote in her diary: “When our work was going well, we sang duets, mostly Brahms, which I could only hum whilst Hahn had a very good singing voice. Radioactivity and atomic physics were then developing incredibly quickly. Nearly every month brought a wonderful, surprisingly new result from one of the laboratories Personally, and scientifically we had a very good relationship ” Lise and Otto soon became part of a lively circle of young people who would remain friends all their lives. They included Planck’s daughter, Emma, who encouraged them to work together at Fischer’s chemical institute But not for the first time,

The pair first met at a physics seminar and there was an instant attraction They were the same age, 28; he was a chemist and very outgoing In company he was passionate and argued fiercely about politics and the ways of the world. In contrast she was reserved, painfully shy and made little contribution to the heated debates that surrounded

Meitner found herself faced with the gender prejudices of the time Fischer barred women from working in his laboratories on the spurious excuse that they might set fire to their hair. The fact the same concerns were not expressed about men, most of whom had luxuriant bushy beards, seemed not to figure in their calculations

Albert Einstein

“Meitner was immune to such slurs, however, happy only to be given a chance to work and study. She made no complaint even when she was separated from Hahn and the rest of the faculty by being forced to work in a damp, converted carpenter’s shop in the basement with a separate entrance She had no position and no salary. Her only income was a small allowance from her parents. When in the company of Hahn other chemists greeted him with: “good day Herr Hahn” Meitner, they ignored This was usual because women at the time were not accepted as students at any of the great German universities. Hahn was different, however He was socially sophisticated he had no problems about working with a woman. Their friendship was close, based on mutual respect and understanding, and it lasted all of their lives But for Hahn it never crossed into anything deeper He never admitted to a romantic relationship He made that clear in his memoirs, published years later: “Lise Meitner had a ladylike upbringing was very reserved, shy,” he wrote “Ap from the physics co we attended we me in the carpenter’s sh There we worked u the evening and one would have to go to salami But we nev our cold supper tog there Lise Meitner home and so did I. we really were very close friends. When

Lise can manage to do so she attends the concerts and opera houses of Berlin In short we were young, contented, carefree...perhaps politically too carefree.”

Meitner and Hahn’s work in radioactivity proceeded at an exhilarating pace They studied every known element and identified several new ones They were a formidable team and soon became known both in the university and the wider scientific community. Her hard work and dedication soon paid off, however In late 1912 the great Max Planck offered her a job as his assistant; the first woman assistant in Berlin. For the first time she was paid a salary, even though her assignment, grading Planck’s student’s papers, was a menial one But she must have realised that Planck was giving her a stepping-stone, for some months later, the Institute appointed Meitner to the position of scientific associate Her position was now the same as Hahn’s, albeit at a considerably smaller salary.

Moving to a new spacious headquarters coincided with a revolutionary new understanding of the atom. Ernest Rutherford, Hahn’s former professor, showed that the atom was not a shapeless globule but instead consisted of a tiny nucleus that was positively charged and surrounded by a wisp of cloud of negatively charged electrons.

To a physicist like Meitner this was manna from heaven, and she threw herself into this new sphere of whirling atoms that heralded a world of limitless possibilities.

Lost in her world, Meitner was oblivious to the consequences of a sunny day in June of 1914 when Archduke Ferdinand, nephew and heir to the reigning Karl Franz Josef of Austria, was assassinated in Sarajevo by a Bosnian Serb nationalist. It was the longawaited excuse for war. By August 1st Germany and Austria had harnessed themselves into a war against most of Europe and the First World War began.

Hahn was called up and sent to Belgium with an infantry regiment and was involved in heavy fighting. A few months later he was recruited into a gas warfare unit. After a brief training he, along with other scientists, began field experiments against the enemy in Belgium There were international laws that forbade the use of poison weapons but in the escalation of warfare during WW1 those international laws were ignored by all sides.

Hahn was appalled and later expressed his horror in his published writings: “First we attacked the soldiers with our gases and then when we saw the poor fellows lying there dying slowly, we tried but we couldn’t save those poor fellows. It made us realise the utter senselessness of war. As a result of continuous work with these highly toxic gases our minds were so numbed that we no longer had any scruples about the whole thing. Science is like a sword, a double edge sword, one side can cut against poverty, disease and misery, but the other side can cut against people Millions of people ”

Meitner managed Hahn’s laboratory while he was away. But in the summer of 1915, she

was moved to volunteer as an x-ray nurse technician with the Austrian Army and was quickly sent to a military hospital near the Russian front. The horrors she witnessed were expressed in a letter to a friend: “Dear Elizabeth, we are converting the local technical institute into a barracks hospital for 6-7000 wounded Ah, what I have already seen, I

night at the Plancks two marvellous trios played Schubert and Beethoven Einstein played violin, and occasionally made amazingly naive and really quite peculiar comments on political and military prospects That there exists an educated person in these times who could not so much as pick up a newspaper; it is really a curiosity.”

never expected it to be as awful as it actually is. These poor people who at best will be cripples, and for most the most horrible pain. One can hear their terrible screams and groans and see their horrible wounds ”

After a year of this, Meitner returned to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, weary but eager to get back to her life. She found most of her colleagues still lost in the miasma of scientific life and completely ignorant of the horrors being perpetrated just 100 miles away at the front. In a revealing letter to Hahn, she wrote: “Dear Herr Hahn last

Meitner put the horrors of war behind her and concentrated on her work She was eager to resume an investigation into the search for a missing radioactive element in the periodic table between Thorium and Uranium, Element 91 Lost in her work, she spent most of her time in the laboratory where she was happiest and where she could forget about the troubles of the world. Her dedication was not lost on her superiors, however, and her fortunes changed dramatically in January 1917 when she was made director of her own section for physics, in effect dividing the laboratory between herself and Hahn. One for Hahn in radio chemistry, one for Meitner in physics; it was a perfect partnership Meitner’s salary was raised to 4,000 marks, almost equal to Hahn’s.

Most important Meitner now had the authority to direct her own work in her own section But with Hahn still away in the war, she worked almost entirely alone. By the summer of 1918 her quest for the missing element 91 was successful, a major

devastated In Germany a new government was proclaimed the Weimar Republic But from the start it was beset with problems; many Germans refused to accept its legitimacy. Uprisings from the left and the right brought revolution and violence to the

It failed and Hitler was imprisoned, but he emerged a hero to his band of followers Meitner and Hahn were not immune to the turmoil around them, but they continued to work as best they could. Meitner soon became one of the pioneers of the new world of nuclear

accomplishment that put her firmly among the top rank of world physics. Unselfishly she included Hahn in her discovery, and to great fanfare they named their new element protactinium

World events soon overshadowed their discovery, however On November 9 1918 the Kaiser surrendered and WW1 came to an end. Much of Europe was

streets Uncontrolled inflation, massive unemployment, lack of essential goods were part of everyday existence. At the height of the depression People brought home their salaries in handcarts By the winter of 1923 there was little food and fuel; riots erupted A unit of National Socialist agitators, led by a youthful Adolf Hitler, attempted a putsch against the government.

Berlin society A cultural revolution was also taking place A glittering and glamorous nightlife emerged with Marlene Dietrich and others introducing music cabaret and theatre to an enthusiastic public But it didn’t last long In 1929 the stock market crash devastated Germany As the depression deepened the Weimar democracy was under siege. It was a turning point for Hitler.

German marks were weighed to buy goods

Meitner and Hahn, like most of the world, were not prepared for the oncoming cataclysm. On January 30th 1933 Hitler’s party came to power and he was sworn in as chancellor; the fate of the Weimar Republic was sealed In quick order he dismantled the constitutional government; Brownshirts staged massive torchlight parades, the Reichstag, the German Parliament, wa set ablaze. Thousands of political dissidents wer jailed and sent concentration camps. Jews became the ne scapegoat for German’s ills those early days many were went to Dachau During that turbulent time Otto Hahn was lecturing at Cornell University in New York, while Meitner took his place as director of the institute in Germany A jew by birth, Meitner sensed the danger around her Fearfully she wrote to Hahn: “The political situation is rather strange, but I very much hope it will take a calmer, more sensible turn We were notified last night that as well as the black, white and red flag we must also display the swastika. A rather large national socialist cell has formed in the institute and it

is all quite methodical ” Hahn decided to return to Berlin for an urgent meeting with Max Planck, president of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society. They were appalled at the way thuggish elements

Nazi policy on most matters and compromised on the rest They were rewarded with increased funding for military research to improve weapons for the German army, and showed their gratitude by

in the national socialists were riding roughshod over cherished German institutions. The persecution of jews, especially concerned them. Nevertheless their consciences didn’t extend to actually bring themselves to set against the new regime; their greatest concern was to protect their scientific institutions. They decided not to make trouble. In fact they become arch appeasers They agreed the Kaiser Wilhelm Society should fly the swastika, they used ‘Heil Hitler!’ in correspondence, and praised the Reich in their reports. They also accepted

complying with a pernicious Nazis law expelling all jews from public office, even though the Kaiser Wilhelm society was a private organisation. Hahn, however, used his influence to make Lise Meitner one of a very few exceptions allowed But Meitner knew that it was only a matter of time before the Nazi stain reached her; she began making the first tentative plans to flee the country She was aided by Neils Bohr, the physicist and Nobel laureate, who offered her a grant to work at his institute in Copenhagen.

Planck, too, was concerned for her safety, and advised her to take a short vacation abroad He assured her that when she returned all the ‘unpleasantness’ would be gone. Meitner was in a quandary She wrote to a friend: “I built my physics centre from its first l stone. It was, so t speak, m life’s wo and it seemed terribly hard for to separa myself f it....”

The truth was that had crea for herse in Berlin substitut for a family S had craft a world, commun that coul sustain h She had created a life for herself, with all emotional and social support that was necessary. She was immersed in a special world, full of promise and scientific discoveries that captivated her It was a rarified world that few could live in: the neutron, a sub-atomic particle with no charge, had only recently been discovered by James

Chadwick It revolutionised scientists’ understanding of the nucleus Meitner was so engrossed in these newest findings that she initially decided to stay whatever the consequences, for she knew she could not find a better place to work than in her own

conferences or deliver papers But high level scientists like her put science and their own work above everything. Both she and Otto Hahn carried on working even though they both knew they were contributing to German prestige, which could be interpreted both inside Germany and outside of many that Nazism somehow tolerable in particular a ish person could vive under the is

laboratory in Berlin. This ‘head in the sand’ attitude brought inevitable consequences First her professional activities outside the institute came to an abrupt end She was dismissed from her teaching position at the university of Berlin and she was no longer invited to attend

tner later admitted uch in one of her ny letters: “Today it ear to me that I mmitted a great al wrong by not ing in 1933 because ing had the result of porting Hitlerism ” n, who was also -nazi was not so bled; he, too, ed his science ve all else, believing was protecting the itute by being mplicit in the ional Socialist rules regulations. And ng the next four rs under the ignant eye of the is, Meitner and n would collaborate on the research that would lead to their most significant discoveries. Enrico Fermi’s discoveries in 1934 when he bombarded uranium nuclei with neutrons was their springboard It opened up an entirely new field of nuclear physics with many new substances and reactions that had not been possible before.

Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn

Meitner followed Fermi’s experiments very closely Even though Fermi was in Rome and she in Berlin, she could duplicate what he was doing without any trouble. She made these new discoveries her field of expertise and soon reported new radioactive substances that were different than all known elements She cautiously suggested that these new discoveries might be elements beyond uranium. Meitner brought in Hahn to investigate the possibility of new elements beyond uranium, because his expertise was chemistry, and an outstanding chemist was needed to get results.

Together they recruited Fritz Strassman a young chemist in the institute and strong antiNazi to join them The trio began a landmark journey into the unknown to create elements beyond uranium.

They postulated that when the uranium nucleus absorbs a neutron it radioactively decays

into a new element 93 which then decays into a new elements 94 and so on But like most scientists of the time, they were mislead by two wrong assumptions: the physicists believed that nuclear changes would always be small, which turned out to be mistaken, while the chemists, meanwhile, worked on the assumption that the elements 93 and 94 would have certain chemical properties, which turned out to be false. As they became more and more absorbed Meitner’s team tried to shut out the political chaos around them. They were shaken out of their complacency on March 12 1938 when German troops marched over the border into Austria, with not a shot fired Colossal crowds cheered as Hitler headed the march and in a rousing speech declared all Austrians were now German citizens.

From that point Meitner was no longer protected by her

Austrian citizenship Her Austrian passport was invalid meaning she had none of the protections she had had up to that point. Her status in the institute changed from questionable to extremely precarious She was subjected to a whispering campaign the central theme of which was, ‘the jew is a danger to the institute.’

Meitner kept out of sight as much as possible, hiding in her laboratory, trying to make her work a shield against the rising danger Hahn was acutely aware of Meitner’s predicament, and the wider implications of what her presence might have on the Institute. He broached the subject with the authorities, but was told bluntly that she must leave the institute immediately With no choice in the matter, Hahn broke the news to his colleague. In a letter she lamented: “Hahn says not to come to the institute anymore; he has thrown me out ”

At age 59 Meitner was facing the unknown Nonetheless she had no choice but to keep working Apart from anything else getting the right papers to enable her to leave was virtually impossible. She needed contacts, letters and visas. Neils Bohr learning of her difficulties invited her to Copenhagen, and other offers came in from around the world. But without the allimportant German passport she could go nowhere

In desperation Meitner met with the new president of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, Carl Bosch and pleaded with hi interve with th authori He wro the Ger ministe the inte asking Meitne issued German passpor An offi record the lett states:-

20th May 1938.

I concern myself with an assignment which in our opinion only you can decide. It concerns Frau Professor Meitner who works scientifically in the KWI for chemistry Frau Meitner is prepared to leave at any time to assume a scientific position in another country It is only a question of obtaining a German passport I would be

very grateful if you would put me in the position of settling this matter

Heil Hitler

The reply he received back dripped with menace:-

Political considerations are in effect that prevent the issuing of a passport for Frau Professor Meitner. It is considered undesirable that well known jews be permitted to travel abroad where with their names and corresponding experience they might even display their inner attitude

personal involvement of the dreaded head of the Gestapo was as good as a death sentence She knew she had to escape, and fast

With no time to lose, she contacted Neils Bohr who put together an escape plan.

Treacherous fellow scientists at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, however, got wind of the plot and informed the police.

Meitner found herself being watched by the Gestapo round the clock

To make matters worse, on July 4th 1938, the Nazis made the policy forbidding all

against Germany. Surely the Kaiser Wilhelm Society can find a way for Frau Professor Meitner to remain in Germany even after she resigns. This represents the particular view of the Reichsfuhrer of the SS and the chief of the German police Heinrich Himmler

Heil Hitler

If Meitner wasn’t sure before what fate awaited her in Germany, she was now. The

scientists from leaving Germany, law. Meitner was informed that if she tried to cross the border she could be arrested and shot Neils Bohr knowing her life was hanging by a thread hired an emissary called Gerd Costa, with connections with both Dutch and German border officials, and sent him on the dangerous mission to rescue Meitner before it was too late

Nazi SS leader Heinrich Himmler at his desk

What met Costa’s eye as he entered Germany filled him with foreboding. His train for Berlin passed through a surreal, picture book landscape of quaint, medieval towns, but with all the buildings draped in huge, garish black and red swastika flags Police and soldiers were

and Costa finally made it to Berlin, although still uncertain whether the escape plan would work

At a prearranged time, Meitner slipped unseen from her lodgings, with all her worldly possessions packed into two small suitcases, and made her way to Berlin

arrested at any time But a guard only gave their papers a perfunctory glance before moving them on

everywhere. Passports were being checked and re-checked. Arrests were being made, and men fleeing, chased by police, was a common sight.

Costa’s talks with Dutch border guards seeking covert help for Meitner was fraught with danger; he felt he could be exposed at any moment Patiently and with extreme caution he finally succeeded in getting the help he needed Money was exchanged

station. Costa had coached her about what to expect and following his precise instructions she made her way to a designated carriage.

Costa, watching from another carriage, made his way to her as the train drew from the station. Meitner watched as Berlin slipped away, and all her life’s work with it. The journey was tense and as the pair approach the border they expected to be confronted and

Once on Dutch soil Costa sent a telegram to Hahn: “Baby arrived, all is well ” Freedom wasn’t all that was expected, however. For two long weeks Meitner t l i promising nuclear scientists she thought she would be welcomed with open arms Instead she was isolated and given a very small room. Meitner was devastated and fell into a deep depression One of her letters to Hahn revealed her sorrow: “One dare not look back, one cannot look forward ” It is a black statement repeated in several letters. Another says: “My future is cut off Shall the past be also taken from me as well ”

Her one lifeline was that she remained in contact with Hahn and Strasser in Berlin. Throughout the autumn of 1938 Hahn frequently wrote to

the day since they last saw each other and he was eager to discuss his latest findings with her.

Meitner met him at the train

Meitner about their progress, often asking for advice and interpretation on their experiments with uranium. One of the things that concerned them was a report by Irene Curie from Paris of a new substance derived from the irradiatio uranium with neutrons. T Curie substance was radioactive and present in amounts so small it could only be detected by a geiger counter

The new radioactivity behaved like barium, but Hahn and Strassman did not think it was barium, and concluded the new substance must be radium which was chemically similar to Barium, in the same group in the periodic table.

Hahn travelled to Copenhagen and met Meitner at the Bohr institute. It was four months to

m to y d

breakfast and talked for hours Hahn later met Neils Bohr, Meitner’s nephew, the physicist, Otto Robert Frisch, and other physicists in the Copenhagen Institute After a heated debate they all assured Hahn that his radium findings must be incorrect and that more experiments were needed.

Hahn returned to Berlin to find the political situation very much worse. On November 9 1938, came the Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass, an

organised Government pogrom against the jews Nazi troops and civilians torched synagogues, vandalised Jewish homes, schools and businesses and killed close to 100 jews In the aftermath of Kristallnacht, some 30,000 jewish men were arrested and sent to Nazi concentration camps. After Kristallnacht, conditions for German jews grew increasingly worse Hahn realised he could not tell anyone he had met with Meitner, not even his colleague Strassman But he did tell him that she had urgently requested that they re-examine the radium findings

And so they began a new experiment to prove they really did have radium by separating it from all other elements. Their method was fractional crystallisation or fractionation. They fully expected they would be able to separate the radium from the barium carrier. But the experiments did not go as planned.

Hahn expressed his frustration in a letter to Meitner dated Dec 19, 1938: “Dear Lise Last week I fractionated thorium, it went exactly as it should Then on Saturday Strassman and I fractionated our radium isotopes The radium did not become enriched as the other element they used did. It could still be an extremely strange coincidence but we are becoming steadily closer to the frightful conclusion: our radium isotopes do not act like radium but like Barium...”

Neils Bohr

Otto Frisch

What they had found, and this was the big discovery, they found they could not separate those radioactive isotopes from the Barium carrier. There was something about the radium isotopes that was so remarkable they simply could not believe it: They could be separated from all elements except barium. And if they couldn’t separate it there was only one conclusion: those isotopes were not radium at all, but actually Barium. Uranium had produced barium...a discovery as remarkable as the fabled quest by medieval alchemists to transmute lead into gold

Hahn and Strassm were at complet But how a uraniu nucleus into Bar which is much sm Hahn tu Lise Me perhaps nuclear physicis explain mystery

“Perhap can com with some fantastic explanation,” he wrote in despair.

On 21 December 1938 Meitner wrote back: “Dear Otto. Your radium results are very startling: a reaction with slow neutrons that supposedly leads to Barium At the moment the assumption of such a thoroughgoing breakup of the

uranium nucleus seems difficult to me. But in nuclear physics we have experienced so many surprises that one cannot unconditionally say that it is impossible.”

Meitner was spending Christmas with friends in the Swiss town of Kungalv when she received Hahn’s anguished letter Her nephew Otto Robert Frisch, arrived to join the group. He wanted to discuss an important problem he was wrestling with, but found his aunt engrossed in Hahn’s letter.

He recalled: “We took a walk up and down in the snow, I on

a tree trunk and started to calculate on scraps of paper.” They hypothesised that the uranium nucleus might indeed be a very globular and unstable drop ready to divide itself at the slightest provocation such as the impact of a neutron. But that would require a very large amount of energy, millions of electron volts Where could that amount of energy possibly come from? Meitner calculated the debris left over by the fissioning of the breakup and found the uranium nucleus was lighter than the original uranium nucleus Where had the rest gone? The answer hit Meitner

skis and she on foot and gradually the idea took shape: This was no chipping or cracking of a nucleus, but rather a process to be explained by Bohr’s idea that the nucleus is like a liquid drop Such a drop might elongate and split in two At this point we both sat down on

like a thunderbolt: when debris, or mass, disappears energy is created in line with Einstein’s formula E=mc2. Here was the source for that energy! Meitner’s flash of genius had proved Einstein’s most famous formula, something that had only existed in the rarefied realms of theoretical physics.

Lise Meitner

Aunt and nephew realised something momentous had occurred Frisch, young and exciteable, wanted the whole world to know; Meitner wanted time to think through the implications and urged restraint But, in a state of great excitement Frisch took himself off to Denmark to consult with Nobel Laureate Neils Bohr, a physicist second only to Einstein in the international scientific pecking order. Bohr grasped the implications immediately He smote his forehead with his hand and exclaimed: “Oh! What idiots we have all been. This is wonderful.” Bohr urged Frisch and Meitner to write a paper; he promised not to talk about the discovery until the paper was out

Meitner consulted with Hahn and Strassmann, who decided to steal a march on her and go ahead and publish.

It caused a sensation, but Meitner was excluded from the acclaim by Hahn who distanced himself from her and denied the role that she and physics played in the fission

discovery The reason he gave was that he could be in political danger if the Nazis realised that he had continued to collaborate with a jew in exile.

Hahn told the world that fission resulted only from the experiments he and Strassmann had carried out in December The discovery of fission, he believed, would protect him, and by extension, the institute from the ever watchful eye of the Nazis. Belatedly Meitner and Frisch published their own paper in the magazine Nature, and were soon bombarded with telegrams from all over the world.

But it was some months before the Danish scientist Christian Moller pointed out the most important part of fission, the chain reaction. He suggested the fission fragments from the bursting uranium nucleus might contain enough surplus energy to eject a neutron or two, each of which would cause another fission and generate more neutrons By such a chain reaction, the

neutrons would multiply in uranium ‘like rabbits in a meadow’, to use Frisch’s colourful phrase, opening up the exciting vision of a controlled chain reaction that would liberate nuclear energy on a scale never previously imagined Scientists began delving further and it wasn’t long before the disturbing spectre of an uncontrolled chain reaction resulting in a ‘super bomb’ of huge destructive power hove into view

With this realisation came the dread thought that with war imminent, German scientists were almost certainly working along similar lines. On September 1st 1939 Germany invaded Poland Two days later Britain and France declared war on Germany Within days the German military instigated a new research project into the military applications of nuclear fission Otto Hahn committed his institute to fission research for the duration of the war It started alarm bells ringing all over the world

Next Time: Meitner's nephew Otto Frisch flees to England with the secret of atomic fission locked in his brain. He meets an old colleague Rudolph Peierls at Birmingham university and together they work out how an atomic bomb can be made. But they encounter many difficulties, braving prejudice and ignorance (not to mention Hitler's Blitz), as they struggle to bring their discovery to the attention of Churchill and Roosevelt.

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The ballyhoo over the 'Boris Gong' nuclear test medal continues with veterans Minister Johnny Mercer popping in to the factory w medals are b made. And v pretty the m look too!

According to commentary

2,000 test participants were still alive to collect the medal in time for Remembrance Day

One startling point made was that there were up to 40,000 participants in the nuclear testing programme, which came as a big surprise to many

Up to now it was generally thought that just over 21,000 people had taken part in the tests, which was the official figure used by the

government in carrying out four major studies into the health of the veterans But even that figure, many

felt, was a gross exaggertation. When the plight of the nuclear veterans was first brought to the wider public attention back in 1983 the number of test participants as described by Margaret Thatcher in Parliament was put at just 8,000 men

This was soon revised to 12,000 after the Australian tests were taken into account But as the furore grew over

the dreadful effects of the tests on the men, the Government came up with a further revised figure of 18-20,000 participants everyone a figure of t ts e the 18,000 test ts? Where on he government suddenly find all these extra people? Dock workers in Fiji? Sailors passing within 100 miles of Christmas Island? Someone who made the tea for the crew setting sail for the Pacific? The ship's cat? Who knows But whatever the answer, Britain's nuclear veterans must be one of the very few growth industries left in the UK.

Ken McGinley Roy Sefton Archie Ross Mike Rubery Derek Chappell Haldane Isaksen

Johnny Mercer