Put on your goggles.

Observers without goggles must face away from the blast.

H-minus 10 seconds.

9. 8.

7.

6. 5. 4, 3, 2, 1, 0.

That was the countdown to a nuclear bomb being tested in Nevada in 1955, because you

are listening to a somewhat sinister episode of elemental economics from Business Daily.

Today we'll be exploring some very dark elements indeed, the deadly history of plutonium

and the family of radioactive elements associated with it.

You know plutonium as the main ingredient of the weapons that went on to

lock the world into Cold War for decades. If we are attacked by nuclear weapons, these are the

warning sounds you must recognise. But don't worry, it is not all Armageddon or the threat of it. These man-made

elements have inveigled themselves into some surprising niches in the global economy, including

life-saving applications everywhere from your hospital to your own home and all the way out

to the dark side of the moon.

You go to the movie in Apollo 13, they came back on their nuclear battery.

But our knowledge of these elements has come at a terrible price, a price paid not just by the victims of atomic bombs, but also by unsuspecting American citizens, as we'll be discovering.

I'm in the beautiful rolling hills above the main campus of one of America's greatest universities,

the Berkeley campus of the University of California. It's a sunny day and

I don't want to make you jealous, but I'm looking out at the San Francisco Bay. This is a lovely

tranquil place, but it is also where back in 1940 plutonium was discovered. That discovery was to change

...