nuclear weapons

A Last Week Tonight segment on the US nuclear arsenal and how poorly it is maintained and secured. It covers weapons accidents, outdated launch protocols and security problems.

Harvard Belfer Center lecture by Matthew Bunn explaining how nuclear bombs work, including fission and fusion weapons and which parts of bomb-making are hard. It is part 1 of 2 in the Nuclear 101 series.

Part one of Sandia National Labs' first-person documentary on the use control, detonation safety and survivability of US nuclear weapons. It covers nuclear sharing in NATO and how control of use was separated from possession, leading to the always/never problem.

Isao Hashimoto's time-lapse map shows all 2053 nuclear explosions between 1945 and 1998, with each nation getting a blip and a running tally. Each second represents one month.

Scott Manley explains the Cold War experiments in which steel and aluminium spheres, known as Lew Allen's Balls, were placed near nuclear detonations. The spheres survived the fireball, and he walks through what the declassified results show.

A 56-minute fake BBC nuclear attack news broadcast originally made by Ben Marking, re-uploaded in full resolution. It is a fictional breaking-news special depicting nuclear war, and the uploader states it is not real.

Physicist Jean-Pierre Petit gives a long technical commentary on Russia's newly announced weapons, including the Sarmat missile, a nuclear-powered cruise missile and a nuclear MHD-propelled submarine drone.

A timeline visualization plotting the 2053 nuclear tests and detonations from 1945 to 1998 on a world map, with sound marking each blast. It conveys the pace of the nuclear arms race.

A short clip showing how the Soviet Union used a nuclear explosion to extinguish a blown-out, burning gas well.

Tom Lehrer performs his satirical song Who's Next, about the spread of nuclear weapons, with a spoken introduction. It is a short musical comedy piece from the Cold War era.

Scott Manley tells the story of a computerized telemetry system built to sit at the heart of a nuclear test device in place of the plutonium pit, designed to transmit data in the microseconds before it was destroyed.

A short Reuters news clip showing declassified Russian footage of the 1961 Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated. It shows the blast and the mushroom cloud.

Veritasium tells how Kodak film was fogged by radioactive fallout from the first atomic tests, letting the company detect nuclear testing before anyone announced it. The video also covers the deal to keep it quiet and how fallout contaminated packaging.

In this TEDxBerlin talk, environmental activist Michael Shellenberger explains why he changed from opposing nuclear power to advocating it, after looking at the evidence on Chernobyl, Fukushima and air pollution.

Kurzgesagt compares how many people nuclear accidents have killed against other energy sources. It walks through the worst nuclear accidents and puts their death tolls in context per unit of energy.

A professor from Illinois compares the cost of building, fueling and operating a nuclear plant against a natural gas plant, using visual charts. It shows how construction time and interest rates dominate, when the investment pays off and when costs cross over.

In a 2010 Google Tech Talk, Kirk Sorensen gives an economic analysis of what spent nuclear fuel actually contains. He argues it is mostly valuable material that can be partitioned and reused, not just waste to be isolated for 100,000 years.

Professor Ruzic explains modular micro-reactors: self-contained nuclear units with passive safety whose fuel lasts about 20 years. He covers their use for process and district heat and where they can compete with diesel generation.

Kyle Hill explains what nuclear waste actually is and how it is stored, arguing that the problem was effectively solved decades ago. It covers solid shielded waste and deep geological storage.

Real Engineering looks at why nuclear power plants are expensive and how their economics compare with fossil and renewable alternatives. It is based on a video from the Illinois Energy Professors.

A lecture for high school seniors and college freshmen making the case for nuclear power and answering common objections. It is an overview of the channel's more detailed videos on each topic.

A 1968 NASA film from the US National Archives explaining why the US needed a nuclear rocket and how the engine works. It also shows combined nuclear and chemical stages for a manned Mars mission.

Scott Manley explains the nuclear salt water rocket, Robert Zubrin's concept of a rocket fueled by a rapid nuclear reaction in uranium salt dissolved in water. He covers its extraordinary performance and the dangers of managing it.

Mark Nelson of Radiant Energy Group explains how France, a leader in decarbonization through nuclear power, mismanaged its fleet, and what policy and outages threaten its future.

Cleo Abram's explainer on whether nuclear waste is really the intractable problem it is portrayed as, looking at how spent fuel can be recycled and used. It features a collaboration with Johnny Harris.

A Last Week Tonight segment in which John Oliver explains the US nuclear waste storage problem, including the Yucca Mountain politics. It argues the country needs a safe place to store waste.

Dave Jones of EEVblog debunks the marketing claims of the self-charging nano nuclear diamond battery from NDB Inc. He argues it is no better than existing 100uW betavoltaic batteries, with an added graphene supercapacitor.

The original trailer for Threads, the 1984 British TV film depicting the aftermath of a nuclear attack on Sheffield. The trailer hints at the film's bleak tone.

Slaughterbots is a short sci-fi film in which swarms of cheap autonomous drones are programmed to kill targets by profile. It was made as arms-control advocacy against autonomous weapons.

Destin Sandlin of Smarter Every Day documents boarding a US Navy nuclear submarine in the Arctic during the ICEX 2020 under-ice exercise. It is the first of a series on life aboard a fast attack submarine.

Randall Munroe of xkcd answers what would happen if you swam in a spent nuclear fuel pool, and how much radiation you would receive at the surface versus at depth.

A sketch from the British sitcom Yes, Prime Minister in which Jim Hacker and the chief scientific advisor discuss the logic of the nuclear deterrent.

Slaughterbots is a fictional short film, backed by Stuart Russell, depicting swarms of cheap autonomous drones that use facial recognition to assassinate targets. It was made to argue for banning autonomous weapons.

A two-minute clip from the documentary The Fog of War in which Robert McNamara recalls Fidel Castro explaining how close the world came to nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

A dramatization of a hypothetical Soviet first strike that destroys US bombers and Minuteman missiles, filmed with US Air Force cooperation. It is a short version of the 1979 documentary First Strike.

Sabine Hossenfelder weighs the arguments for and against nuclear power, covering waste, fuel supply and newer reactor designs. She is skeptical that fast breeders and thorium solve the problems.

Declassified footage of 1950s tests of Project Orion, the nuclear pulse propulsion concept, including the Hot Rod prototypes flown on conventional high explosives. It shows the pusher-plate idea working in small scale.

The 1951 US civil defense film 'Duck and Cover', starring Bert the Turtle, which taught schoolchildren to drop and shield themselves during a nuclear attack. It was shown to millions of children and is preserved in the National Film Registry.

Forgotten Weapons examines the Heckler & Koch G11, a West German experimental rifle built around a caseless cartridge. The video covers the G11K2 and its unusual technology before its cancellation for political and economic reasons.

Novelist Daniel Suarez warns in a TED talk about autonomous robotic weapons and drones. He argues that taking the decision to kill out of human hands threatens democratic accountability and calls for a ban.