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Silent Storm | |
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Directed by | Peter Butt |
Produced by | Peter Butt Anna Greive Rob McAuley |
Starring | Bille Brown Paula Arundell |
Music by | Guy Gross |
Distributed by | Film Australia SBS independent |
Release date | 2003 |
Running time | 90 minutes |
Country | Australia |
Language | English |
Silent Storm is a 2003 Australian documentary film written and directed by Peter Butt.
From 1957 to 1978, scientists secretly removed bone samples from over 21,000 dead Australians as they searched for evidence of the deadly poison, Strontium 90 – a by-product of nuclear testing. Silent Storm reveals the story behind this astonishing case of officially sanctioned 'body-snatching'. Set against a backdrop of the Cold War, the saga follows celebrated scientist, Hedley Marston, as he attempts to blow the whistle on radioactive contamination and challenge official claims that British atomic tests posed no threat to the Australian people. Marston's findings are not only disputed, he is targeted as 'a scientist of counter-espionage interest'.
Operation Ivy was the eighth series of American nuclear tests, coming after Tumbler-Snapper and before Upshot–Knothole. The two explosions were staged in late 1952 at Enewetak Atoll in the Pacific Proving Ground in the Marshall Islands.
Operation Grapple was a set of four series of British nuclear weapons tests of early atomic bombs and hydrogen bombs carried out in 1957 and 1958 at Malden Island and Kiritimati in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands in the Pacific Ocean as part of the British hydrogen bomb programme. Nine nuclear explosions were initiated, culminating in the United Kingdom becoming the third recognised possessor of thermonuclear weapons, and the restoration of the nuclear Special Relationship with the United States in the form of the 1958 US–UK Mutual Defence Agreement.
Maralinga, in the remote western areas of South Australia, was the site, measuring about 3,300 square kilometres (1,300 sq mi) in area, of British nuclear tests in the mid-1950s.
Operation Hurricane was the first test of a British atomic device. A plutonium implosion device was detonated on 3 October 1952 in Main Bay, Trimouille Island, in the Montebello Islands in Western Australia. With the success of Operation Hurricane, Britain became the third nuclear power, after the United States and the Soviet Union.
Between 1956 and 1963, the United Kingdom conducted seven nuclear tests at the Maralinga site in South Australia, part of the Woomera Prohibited Area about 800 kilometres (500 mi) north west of Adelaide. Two major test series were conducted: Operation Buffalo in 1956 and Operation Antler the following year. Approximate weapon yields ranged from 1 to 27 kilotons of TNT. The Maralinga site was also used for minor trials, tests of nuclear weapons components not involving nuclear explosions. Kittens were trials of neutron initiators; Rats and Tims measured how the fissile core of a nuclear weapon was compressed by the high explosive shock wave; and Vixens investigated the effects of fire or non-nuclear explosions on atomic weapons. The minor trials, numbering around 550, ultimately generated far more contamination than the major tests.
William George Penney, Baron Penney, was an English mathematician and professor of mathematical physics at the Imperial College London and later the rector of Imperial College London. He had a leading role in the development of High Explosive Research, Britain's clandestine nuclear programme that started in 1942 during the Second World War which produced the first British atomic bomb in 1952.
In 1952, the United Kingdom became the third country to develop and test nuclear weapons, and is one of the five nuclear-weapon states under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
The McClelland Royal Commission or Royal Commission into British nuclear tests in Australia was an inquiry by the Australian government in 1984–1985 to investigate the conduct of the British in its use, with the then Australian government's permission, of Australian territory and soldiers for testing nuclear weapons. It was chaired by Jim McClelland.
Peter Butt is an Australian film producer, director and writer. He produces investigative documentaries for television about 20th century global and Australian history. Most of his films have been in conjunction with Film Australia, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and SBS.
Sir Ernest William Titterton was a British nuclear physicist.
Hedley Ralph Marston FRS FAA was an Australian biochemist who worked for the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).
Robbery Under Arms is a bushranger novel by Thomas Alexander Browne, published under his pen name Rolf Boldrewood. It was first published in serialised form by The Sydney Mail between July 1882 and August 1883, then in three volumes in London in 1888. It was abridged into a single volume in 1889 as part of Macmillan's one-volume Colonial Library series and has not been out of print since.
Operation Totem was a pair of British atmospheric nuclear tests which took place at Emu Field in South Australia in October 1953. They followed the Operation Hurricane test of the first British atomic bomb, which had taken place at the Montebello Islands a year previously. The main purpose of the trial was to determine the acceptable limit on the amount of plutonium-240 which could be present in a bomb.
Maralinga: Australia’s Nuclear Waste Cover-up is a book by Alan Parkinson about the clean-up of the British atomic bomb test site at Maralinga in South Australia, published in 2007.
Operation Mosaic was a series of two British nuclear tests conducted in the Monte Bello Islands in Western Australia on 16 May and 19 June 1956. These tests followed the Operation Totem series and preceded the Operation Buffalo series. The second test in the series was the largest ever conducted in Australia.
The United Kingdom conducted 12 major nuclear weapons tests in Australia between 1952 and 1957. These explosions occurred at the Montebello Islands, Emu Field and Maralinga.
Avon Hudson is a South Australian RAAF ex-serviceman, nuclear weapons testing whistle-blower and co-author of the 2005 book Beyond Belief which he wrote with academic and historian, Roger Cross. He has appeared in several documentary films about nuclear weapons testing in Australia.
The British hydrogen bomb programme was the ultimately successful British effort to develop hydrogen bombs between 1952 and 1958. During the early part of the Second World War, Britain had a nuclear weapons project, codenamed Tube Alloys. At the Quebec Conference in August 1943, British prime minister Winston Churchill and United States president Franklin Roosevelt signed the Quebec Agreement, merging Tube Alloys into the American Manhattan Project, in which many of Britain's top scientists participated. The British government trusted that America would share nuclear technology, which it considered to be a joint discovery, but the United States Atomic Energy Act of 1946 ended technical cooperation. Fearing a resurgence of American isolationism, and the loss of Britain's great power status, the British government resumed its own development effort, which was codenamed "High Explosive Research".