Plot

Host and physicist Dr. Derek Muller unlocks the mysteries of uranium, one of the Earth's most controversial elements.

Host and physicist Dr. Derek Muller unlocks the mysteries of uranium, one of the Earth's most controversial elements. Dr. Muller embarks on an epic journey across the globe to explain the fascinating details of uranium's birth and longevity. Born from the collapse of a star, uranium has brought hope, progress and destruction. It has revolutionized society, from medicine to warfare. It is an element that has profoundly shaped the past, will change the future and will exist long after humans have left the Earth. Filmed on five continents, this two-hour program, produced by Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Sonya Pemberton, delivers a gripping story of an ancient element's footprint on the world.

URANIUM Twisting the Dragons Tail is an Australian made series, an epic journey through nine countries and over a century of stories. Part science and part history, its an adventure brought to life by an exciting new personality in television science: Australian-born Canadian raised, Dr Derek Muller. Creator of the hit YouTube channel Veritasium, this is his first appearance as host of an international television documentary series.

In URANIUM Twisting the Dragons Tail Derek unleashes a historians passion for detail, a physicists understanding of science, and a journalists nose for a good story. Derek takes a fresh path through the story of uranium, the most desired and the most hated rock on Earth.

Across three fascinating episodes Derek follows uranium from its birth, forged in an exploding star six billion years ago, through the ancient dreamtime stories of Australias indigenous people, and into the laboratories of the first nuclear physicists. Derek takes us down medieval mines and across the arid beauty of a New Mexico desert where the power of uranium was unleashed in the first atomic bomb.

Derek explores the birth of the Atomic Age and the dreamy promise of clean limitless power. For a time, uranium even becomes sexy. We learn how thousands of lives are saved through its ability to diagnose and treat cancer. But the price of uranium is anxiety. New words enter the language, such as fallout and Mutually Assured Destruction. Uranium becomes a nightmare.

Derek takes us through the scary silence of abandoned radioactive landscapes places such as Chernobyl and Fukushima, where uranium has poisoned the earth. He helps us understand the nature of the extraordinary power in uranium, a power that can bring us energy without end, or kill every one of us. Uranium changes everything.

Destroyer and saviour, dream and nightmare: the extraordinary paradox of uranium.

URANIUM Twisting the Dragons Tail is produced by Emmy Award-wining Australian science television specialists Genepool Productions, for SBS Australia, PBS America, and ZDF/Arte (France/Germany).

The series was filmed in 2014-2015 across England, France, Germany, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Ukraine, the United States, Japan and Australia.