A former Bristol University PhD student has been unmasked as a Soviet agent who leaked British atomic weapons research secrets, the BBC reports today.

Klaus Fuchs, who gained a physics PhD from the university in 1942, worked at the Rhydymwyn Valley Works near Mold, Flintshire,  in the 1940s. According to local historian Colin Barber, Fuchs worked for over a year on highly sensitive research into the manufacture of weapons-grade uranium, all the time passing those secrets to the Soviets.

After leaving Wales in 1943, Fuchs went to the United States to work on the Manhattan Project that ultimately led to the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945.

But in 1950 he confessed that he had spied for the Soviet Union and was sentenced to 14 years in prison.

Fuchs left Nazi-ruled Germany because he was a communist and came to Britain in the 1930s.

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