Test of the first atomic bomb in the USSR. Creation and testing of the first atomic bomb in the USSR

A democratic form of government must be established in the USSR.
Vernadsky V.I.

The atomic bomb in the USSR was created on August 29, 1949 (the first successful launch). Academician Igor Vasilyevich Kurchatov supervised the project. The period of development of atomic weapons in the USSR lasted from 1942, and ended with a test on the territory of Kazakhstan. This broke the US monopoly on such weapons, because since 1945 they were the only nuclear power. The article is devoted to describing the history of the emergence of the Soviet nuclear bomb, as well as characterizing the consequences of these events for the USSR.

History of creation

In 1941, representatives of the USSR in New York conveyed to Stalin information that a meeting of physicists was being held in the United States, which was devoted to the development of nuclear weapons. Soviet scientists of the 1930s also worked on the study of the atom, the most famous was the splitting of the atom by scientists from Kharkov, led by L. Landau. However, it did not reach the real use in armament. Worked on this in addition to the USA Nazi Germany. At the end of 1941, the United States began its atomic project. Stalin found out about this at the beginning of 1942 and signed a decree on the creation of a laboratory in the USSR to create an atomic project, Academician I. Kurchatov became its leader.

There is an opinion that work US scientists accelerated the secret development of German colleagues who ended up in America. In any case, in the summer of 1945 at the Potsdam Conference new president United States G. Truman informed Stalin about the completion of work on a new weapon - the atomic bomb. Moreover, to demonstrate the work of American scientists, the US government decided to test a new weapon in battle: on August 6 and 9, bombs were dropped on two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This was the first time that humanity learned about a new weapon. It was this event that forced Stalin to speed up the work of his scientists. I. Kurchatov summoned Stalin and promised to fulfill any requirements of the scientist, if only the process went as quickly as possible. Moreover, a state committee was created under the Council of People's Commissars, which oversaw the Soviet nuclear project. It was headed by L. Beria.

Development has moved to three centers:

Design Bureau of the Kirov Plant, working on the creation of special equipment.
Diffuse plant in the Urals, which was supposed to work on the creation of enriched uranium.
Chemical and metallurgical centers where plutonium was studied. It was this element that was used in the first Soviet-style nuclear bomb.

In 1946, the first Soviet unified nuclear center was established. It was a secret object Arzamas-16, located in the city of Sarov (Nizhny Novgorod region). In 1947, the first nuclear reactor was created at an enterprise near Chelyabinsk. In 1948, a secret training ground was created on the territory of Kazakhstan, near the city of Semipalatinsk-21. It was here that on August 29, 1949, the first explosion of the Soviet atomic bomb RDS-1. This event was kept in complete secrecy, but the American Pacific Air Force was able to record sharp rise radiation levels, which was proof of testing a new weapon. Already in September 1949, G. Truman announced the presence of an atomic bomb in the USSR. Officially, the USSR admitted to having these weapons only in 1950.

There are several main consequences of the successful development of atomic weapons by Soviet scientists:

The loss of the US status of a single state with nuclear weapons. This not only equalized the USSR with the United States in terms of military power, but also forced the latter to think through each of their military steps, since now it was necessary to fear for the response of the USSR leadership.
The presence of atomic weapons in the USSR secured its status as a superpower.
After the United States and the USSR were equalized in the presence of atomic weapons, the race for their number began. States spent huge finances to outperform the competitor. Moreover, attempts began to create even more powerful weapons.
These events served as the start of the nuclear race. Many countries have begun to invest resources to add to the list of nuclear states and ensure their own security.

On February 7, 1960, the famous Soviet scientist Igor Vasilyevich Kurchatov died. An outstanding physicist in the most difficult time created a nuclear shield for his homeland. We will tell you how the first atomic bomb was developed in the USSR

Discovery of a nuclear reaction.

Since 1918, scientists in the USSR have been conducting research in the field of nuclear physics. But only before the Second World War there was a positive shift. Kurchatov came to grips with the study of radioactive transformations in 1932. And in 1939, he supervised the launch of the first cyclotron in the Soviet Union, which took place at the Radium Institute in Leningrad.

At that time this cyclotron was the largest in Europe. This was followed by a series of discoveries. Kurchatov discovered the branching of a nuclear reaction when phosphorus is irradiated with neutrons. And a year later, the scientist in his report “Division heavy nuclei» substantiated the creation of a uranium nuclear reactor. Kurchatov pursued a previously unattainable goal, he wanted to show how to use nuclear energy in practice.

War is a stumbling block.

Thanks to Soviet scientists, including Igor Kurchatov, our country in the development of nuclear research at that time reached the forefront: there were many scientific developments in this area, personnel were being trained. But the outbreak of the war almost crossed everything out. All research in nuclear physics was discontinued. Moscow and Leningrad institutes were evacuated, and the scientists themselves were forced to help the needs of the front. Kurchatov himself worked on protecting ships from mines and even dismantled mines.

The role of intelligence.

Many historians are of the opinion that without intelligence and spies in the West, the atomic bomb would not have appeared in the USSR in such a short time. Since 1939, information on nuclear issue collected the GRU of the Red Army and the 1st Directorate of the NKVD. The first message about plans to create an atomic bomb in England, which by the beginning of the war was one of the leaders in nuclear research, came in 1940. Fuchs, a member of the KKE, was among the scientists. For some time he transmitted information through spies, but then the connection was interrupted.

The Soviet intelligence officer Semyonov worked in the USA. In 1943, he reported that the first nuclear chain reaction had been carried out in Chicago. It is curious that the wife of the famous sculptor Konenkov also worked for intelligence. She was friends with the famous physicists Oppenheimer and Einstein. in different ways Soviet authorities introduced their agents into the centers of American nuclear research. And in 1944, the NKVD even created a special department that collected information about Western developments on the nuclear issue. In January 1945, Fuchs transmitted a description of the design of the first atomic bomb.

So intelligence greatly facilitated and accelerated the work of Soviet scientists. Indeed, the first test of the atomic bomb took place in 1949, although American experts assumed that this would happen in ten years.

Arms race.

Despite the height of hostilities, in September 1942, Joseph Stalin signed an order to resume work on the nuclear issue. On February 11, Laboratory No. 2 was created, and on March 10, 1943, Igor Kurchatov was appointed scientific director of the project on the use of atomic energy. Kurchatov was given emergency powers and promised all kinds of government support. So in the shortest possible time the first nuclear reactor was created and tested. Then Stalin gave two years to create the atomic bomb itself, but in the spring of 1948 this period expired. However, scientists could not demonstrate the bomb, they did not even have the necessary fissile materials for its production. The deadlines were pushed back, but not by much - until March 1, 1949.

Of course, scientific developments Kurchatov and scientists from his laboratory were not published in the open press. They sometimes did not receive proper coverage even in closed reports due to lack of time. Scientists have been working hard to keep up with the competition - Western countries. Especially after the bombings that the US military dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Overcoming difficulties.

The creation of a nuclear explosive device required the construction of an industrial nuclear reactor for its development. But here difficulties arose, because necessary materials for the operation of a nuclear reactor - uranium, graphite - still needs to be obtained.

Note that even a small reactor required about 36 tons of uranium, 9 tons of uranium dioxide and about 500 tons of pure graphite. The graphite shortage was resolved by mid-1943. Kurchatov participated in the development of the entire technological process. And in May 1944, the production of graphite was established at the Moscow Electrode Plant. But the required amount of uranium was still not there.

A year later, mines in Czechoslovakia and East Germany resumed work, and uranium deposits were discovered in Kolyma, in the Chita region, in Central Asia, in Kazakhstan, in Ukraine and the North Caucasus. After that, they began to create atomic cities. The first appeared in the Urals, near the city of Kyshtym. Kurchatov personally supervised the loading of uranium into the reactor. Then three more plants were built - two near Sverdlovsk and one in the Gorky region (Arzamas -16).

Launch of the first nuclear reactor.

Finally, at the beginning of 1948, a group of scientists led by Kurchatov began the installation of a nuclear reactor. Igor Vasilievich was almost constantly at the facility, he took full responsibility for the decisions made. He personally carried out all the stages of launching the first industrial reactor. There were several attempts. So, on June 8, he began the experiment. When the reactor reached a power of one hundred kilowatts, Kurchatov interrupted the chain reaction because there was not enough uranium to complete the process. Kurchatov understood the danger of the experiments and on June 17 he wrote in the operational log:

I warn you that if the water supply stops, there will be an explosion, so under no circumstances should the water supply be stopped ... It is necessary to monitor the water level in emergency tanks and the operation of pumping stations.

Atomic bomb test at the test site near Semipalatinsk

Successful test of the atomic bomb.

By 1947, Kurchatov managed to obtain laboratory plutonium-239 - about 20 micrograms. It was separated from uranium by chemical methods. Two years later, scientists managed to accumulate a sufficient amount. On August 5, 1949, he was sent by train to KB-11. By this time, experts had finished assembling the explosive device. The nuclear charge, assembled on the night of August 10-11, received the index 501 for the RDS-1 atomic bomb. As soon as this abbreviation was not deciphered: “special jet engine”, “Stalin's jet engine”, “Russia makes itself”.

After the experiments, the device was disassembled and sent to the landfill. The test of the first Soviet nuclear charge took place on August 29 at Semipalatinsk polygon. The bomb was installed on a tower 37.5 meters high. When the bomb exploded, the tower collapsed completely and a crater formed in its place. The next day we went to the field to check the effect of the bomb. The tanks on which the impact force was tested were overturned, the guns were mangled by the blast wave, and ten Pobeda vehicles burned down. Note that the Soviet atomic bomb was made in 2 years 8 months. For US scientists, it took a month less.

The appearance of such a powerful weapon as a nuclear bomb was the result of the interaction of global factors of an objective and subjective nature. Objectively, its creation was caused by the rapid development of science, which began with the fundamental discoveries of physics in the first half of the 20th century. The strongest subjective factor was the military-political situation of the 1940s, when countries anti-Hitler coalition- The USA, Great Britain, the USSR - tried to get ahead of each other in the development of nuclear weapons.

Prerequisites for the creation of a nuclear bomb

reference point scientific way 1896 began the creation of atomic weapons, when the French chemist A. Becquerel discovered the radioactivity of uranium. It was the chain reaction of this element that formed the basis for the development of terrible weapons.

At the end of the 19th and in the first decades of the 20th century, scientists discovered alpha, beta, gamma rays, discovered many radioactive isotopes chemical elements, the law of radioactive decay and laid the foundation for the study of nuclear isometry. In the 1930s, the neutron and positron became known, and the nucleus of the uranium atom with the absorption of neutrons was first split. This was the impetus for the creation of nuclear weapons. The French physicist Frédéric Joliot-Curie was the first to invent and patent the design of the nuclear bomb in 1939.

As a result of further development, nuclear weapons have become a historically unprecedented military-political and strategic phenomenon capable of ensuring the national security of the owner state and minimizing the capabilities of all other weapons systems.

The design of an atomic bomb consists of a number of different components, among which there are two main ones:

frame,
automation system.

Automation, together with a nuclear charge, is located in a case that protects them from various influences (mechanical, thermal, etc.). The automation system controls that the explosion occurs in strictly set time. It consists of the following elements:

emergency detonation;
safety and cocking device;
source of power;
charge detonation sensors.

Delivery of atomic charges is carried out with the help of aviation, ballistic and cruise missiles. At the same time, nuclear munitions can be an element of a land mine, torpedo, aerial bombs, etc.

Nuclear bomb detonation systems are different. The simplest is the injection device, in which the impetus for the explosion is hitting the target and the subsequent formation of a supercritical mass.

Another characteristic of atomic weapons is the size of the caliber: small, medium, large. Most often, the power of the explosion is characterized in TNT equivalent. A small caliber nuclear weapon implies a charge capacity of several thousand tons of TNT. The average caliber is already equal to tens of thousands of tons of TNT, large - measured in millions.

Operating principle

The scheme of the atomic bomb is based on the principle of using nuclear energy released during a nuclear chain reaction. This is the process of fission of heavy or synthesis of light nuclei. Due to selection huge amount intranuclear energy in the shortest period of time, a nuclear bomb is a weapon of mass destruction.

There are two key points in this process:

the center of a nuclear explosion, in which the process directly takes place;
the epicenter, which is the projection of this process onto the surface (land or water).

A nuclear explosion releases an amount of energy that, when projected onto the ground, causes seismic tremors. The range of their propagation is very large, but significant harm environment applied at a distance of only a few hundred meters.

Nuclear weapons have several types of destruction:

light emission,
radioactive contamination,
shockwave,
penetrating radiation,
electromagnetic impulse.

A nuclear explosion is accompanied by a bright flash, which is formed due to the release of a large amount of light and thermal energy. The strength of this flash is many times higher than the power sun rays, so the danger of exposure to light and heat extends over several kilometers.

Another very dangerous factor The impact of a nuclear bomb is the radiation generated during the explosion. It works only for the first 60 seconds, but has a maximum penetrating power.

The shock wave has a high power and a significant destructive effect, therefore, in a matter of seconds, it causes great harm to people, equipment, and buildings.

Penetrating radiation is dangerous for living organisms and is the cause of radiation sickness in humans. The electromagnetic pulse affects only the technique.

All these types of damage combined make the atomic bomb a very dangerous weapon.

First nuclear bomb tests

The United States was the first to show the greatest interest in atomic weapons. At the end of 1941, huge funds and resources were allocated in the country for the creation of nuclear weapons. The work resulted in the first tests of an atomic bomb with an explosive device "Gadget", which took place on July 16, 1945 in the US state of New Mexico.

It is time for the US to act. For the victorious end of the Second World War, it was decided to defeat the ally Nazi Germany- Japan. At the Pentagon, targets were chosen for the first nuclear strikes, in which the United States wanted to demonstrate how powerful weapons they possess.

On August 6 of the same year, the first atomic bomb under the name "Kid" was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, and on August 9, a bomb with the name "Fat Man" fell on Nagasaki.

The hit in Hiroshima was considered ideal: a nuclear device exploded at an altitude of 200 meters. The blast wave overturned the stoves in the houses of the Japanese, heated by coal. This has led to numerous fires even in urban areas far from the epicenter.

The initial flash was followed by a heat wave impact that lasted seconds, but its power, covering a radius of 4 km, melted tiles and quartz in granite slabs, incinerated telegraph poles. After the heat wave came the shock wave. The wind speed was 800 km / h, and its gust demolished almost everything in the city. Of the 76,000 buildings, 70,000 were completely destroyed.

A few minutes later, a strange rain of large black drops began to fall. It was caused by condensation formed in the colder layers of the atmosphere from steam and ash.

People affected by fireball at a distance of 800 meters, were burned and turned into dust. Some had their burnt skin torn off by the shock wave. Drops of black radioactive rain left incurable burns.

The survivors fell ill with a previously unknown disease. They began to experience nausea, vomiting, fever, bouts of weakness. The level of white cells in the blood dropped sharply. These were the first signs of radiation sickness.

3 days after the bombing of Hiroshima, a bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. It had the same power and caused similar effects.

Two atomic bombs killed hundreds of thousands of people in seconds. The first city was practically wiped off the face of the earth by the shock wave. More than half of the civilians (about 240 thousand people) died immediately from their wounds. Many people were exposed to radiation, which led to radiation sickness, cancer, infertility. In Nagasaki, 73 thousand people were killed in the first days, and after a while another 35 thousand inhabitants died in great agony.

Video: nuclear bomb tests

RDS-37 tests

Creation of the atomic bomb in Russia

The consequences of the bombing and the history of the inhabitants of Japanese cities shocked I. Stalin. It became clear that the creation of their own nuclear weapons is a question national security. On August 20, 1945, the Atomic Energy Committee began its work in Russia, headed by L. Beria.

Nuclear physics research has been carried out in the USSR since 1918. In 1938, a commission on the atomic nucleus was established at the Academy of Sciences. But with the outbreak of war, almost all work in this direction was suspended.

In 1943, Soviet intelligence officers handed over closed scientific works on atomic energy, from which it followed that the creation of the atomic bomb in the West had advanced far ahead. At the same time, in the United States, reliable agents were introduced into several American nuclear research centers. They passed information on the atomic bomb to Soviet scientists.

The terms of reference for the development of two variants of the atomic bomb were compiled by their creator and one of the scientific leaders Yu. Khariton. In accordance with it, it was planned to create an RDS (“special jet engine”) with an index of 1 and 2:

RDS-1 - a bomb with a charge of plutonium, which was supposed to undermine by spherical compression. His device was handed over by Russian intelligence.
RDS-2 is a cannon bomb with two parts of a uranium charge, which must approach each other in the cannon barrel until a critical mass is created.

In the history of the famous RDS, the most common decoding - "Russia does it itself" - was invented by Yu. Khariton's deputy for scientific work K. Shchelkin. These words very accurately conveyed the essence of the work.

Information that the USSR had mastered the secrets of nuclear weapons caused an impulse in the USA to start a pre-emptive war as soon as possible. In July 1949, the Trojan plan appeared, according to which fighting it was planned to start on January 1, 1950. Then the date of the attack was moved to January 1, 1957, with the condition that all NATO countries enter the war.

Information received through intelligence channels accelerated the work of Soviet scientists. According to Western experts, Soviet nuclear weapons could not have been created before 1954-1955. However, the test of the first atomic bomb took place in the USSR at the end of August 1949.

On August 29, 1949, the RDS-1 nuclear device was blown up at the Semipalatinsk test site - the first Soviet atomic bomb, which was invented by a team of scientists headed by I. Kurchatov and Yu. Khariton. The explosion had a power of 22 kt. The design of the charge imitated the American "Fat Man", and the electronic filling was created by Soviet scientists.

The Trojan plan, according to which the Americans were going to drop atomic bombs on 70 cities in the USSR, was thwarted due to the likelihood of a retaliatory strike. The event at the Semipalatinsk test site informed the world that the Soviet atomic bomb ended the American monopoly on the possession of new weapons. This invention completely destroyed the militaristic plan of the USA and NATO and prevented the development of the Third World War. A new history has begun - an era of world peace, existing under the threat of total destruction.

"Nuclear club" of the world

Nuclear club - symbol several states possessing nuclear weapons. Today there are such weapons:

in the USA (since 1945)
in Russia (originally USSR, since 1949)
in the UK (since 1952)
in France (since 1960)
in China (since 1964)
in India (since 1974)
in Pakistan (since 1998)
in North Korea (since 2006)

Israel is also considered to have nuclear weapons, although the country's leadership does not comment on its presence. In addition, on the territory of NATO member states (Germany, Italy, Turkey, Belgium, the Netherlands, Canada) and allies (Japan, South Korea, despite the official refusal) is a US nuclear weapon.

Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Belarus, which owned part of the nuclear weapons after the collapse of the USSR, in the 90s handed it over to Russia, which became the sole heir to the Soviet nuclear arsenal.

Atomic (nuclear) weapons are the most powerful tool of global politics, which has firmly entered the arsenal of relations between states. On the one hand, it is effective tool intimidation, on the other hand, a weighty argument for preventing military conflict and strengthening peace between the powers that own these weapons. This is a symbol of an entire era in the history of mankind and international relations, which must be handled very wisely.

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Video about the Russian Tsar Bomba

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Nagasaki after atomic bombing

After the Second World War, the United States was the only state with nuclear weapons. They have already had several tests and real combat explosions of nuclear charges in Japan. This state of affairs, of course, did not suit the Soviet leadership. And the Americans have already gone to new level in the development of weapons of mass destruction. The development of a hydrogen bomb was started, the potential power of which many times exceeded all nuclear charges that existed at that time (which the Soviet Union later proved).

In the United States, the development of the hydrogen bomb was led by physicist Edward Teller. In April 1946, a group of scientists was organized in Los Alamos under his leadership, which was to solve this problem. The USSR then did not even have a conventional atomic bomb, but through the English physicist and part-time Soviet agent Klaus Fuchs, the Soviet Union learned almost everything about American developments. The idea of a hydrogen bomb was based on a physical phenomenon - nuclear fusion. This is a complex process of formation of nuclei of atoms of heavier elements due to the fusion of nuclei of light elements. Nuclear fusion releases an astonishing amount of energy, thousands of times more than the decay of heavy nuclei such as plutonium. That is, compared to normal nuclear bomb thermonuclear gave just hellish power. One can now imagine a situation where some state has such a weapon capable of demolishing not one city, but part of the mainland. Just under the threat of its use, you can rule the world. Just one "demonstration performance" is enough. Now it is clear what the superpowers were trying to achieve by making serious bets on the development of thermonuclear weapons.

True, there was one subtlety that almost nullified all the efforts of the then scientists: in order for the process of nuclear fusion to begin and an explosion to occur, millions of temperatures and ultra-high pressures on the components were required. Just like on the Sun - thermonuclear processes are constantly taking place there. It was planned to create such high temperatures by preliminary detonation inside a hydrogen bomb of an ordinary small atomic charge. But with the provision of superhigh pressure, certain difficulties. Teller developed the theory that the necessary pressure of several hundred thousand atmospheres could be provided by a focused explosion of conventional explosives, and this would be enough for a self-sustaining fusion reaction to occur. But this could only be proved by a fantastically large number of calculations. The speed of computers of that time left much to be desired, so the development of a working theory of the hydrogen bomb was very slow.

The United States naively believed that the USSR would not be able to make thermonuclear weapons, since physical principles hydrogen bombs are very complex, and the necessary mathematical calculations are beyond the power of the Soviet Union due to the lack of sufficient computer power. But the Soviets found a very simple and non-standard way out of this situation - a decision was made to mobilize the forces of all mathematical institutions and famous mathematicians. Each of them received one or another task for theoretical calculations, without presenting the overall picture and even the purpose for which his calculations were ultimately used. All the calculations took years. To increase the number of qualified mathematicians, the enrollment of students in all physics and mathematics departments of universities was sharply increased. By the number of mathematicians in 1950, the USSR confidently led the world.

By the middle of 1948, Soviet physicists had not been able to prove that a thermonuclear reaction in liquid deuterium placed in a “pipe” (the code name for the classic version of the hydrogen bomb proposed by the Americans) would be spontaneous, that is, it would go further without stimulation by nuclear explosions. New approaches and ideas were required. New people with fresh ideas were involved in the development of the hydrogen bomb. Among them were Andrei Sakharov and Vitaly Ginzburg.

By the middle of 1949, the Americans were using new high-speed computers at Los Alamos and were speeding up work on the hydrogen bomb. But this only hastened their deep disappointment in the theory of Teller and his colleagues. The calculations performed showed that a spontaneous reaction in deuterium can develop at pressures not of hundreds of thousands, but of tens of millions of atmospheres. Then Teller suggested mixing deuterium with tritium (an even heavier isotope of hydrogen), then, according to his calculations, it would be possible to reduce the required pressure. But tritium, unlike deuterium, does not occur naturally. It can only be obtained artificially and in special reactors, and this is a very expensive and slow process. The United States stopped the hydrogen bomb project, limiting itself to the rather powerful potential of atomic bombs. The states then were atomic monopolists and by the middle of 1949 had an arsenal of 300 atomic charges. This, according to their calculations, was enough to destroy about 100 Soviet cities and industrial centers and disable almost half of the economic infrastructure of the Soviet Union. At the same time, by 1953 they planned to increase their atomic arsenal to 1000 charges.

However, on August 29, 1949, the nuclear charge of the first Soviet atomic bomb was tested at the Semipalatinsk test site, which amounted to about twenty kilotons. TNT equivalent.

The successful test of the first Soviet atomic bomb presented the Americans with an alternative: to stop the arms race and start negotiations with the USSR, or to continue the creation of the hydrogen bomb, inventing a replacement for the classic Teller model. It was decided to continue development. Calculations on the supercomputer that had appeared by that time confirmed that the pressure during the detonation of explosives did not reach the required level. In addition, it turned out that the temperature during the preliminary detonation of the atomic bomb was also not high enough to start chain reaction synthesis in deuterium. Classic variant was finally rejected, but there was no new solution. The states could only hope that the USSR followed the path stolen from them (they already knew about the spy Fuchs, who was arrested in England in January 1950). In part, the Americans were right in their hopes. But already at the end of 1949, Soviet physicists created a new model of the hydrogen bomb, which was called the Sakharov-Ginzburg model. All forces were thrown at its implementation. This model obviously had some limitations: the processes of atomic synthesis of deuterium did not occur in two stages, but simultaneously, the hydrogen component of the bomb was released in relatively small quantities, which limited the power of the explosion. This power could be a maximum of twenty to forty times the power of a conventional plutonium bomb, but preliminary calculations confirmed its viability. The Americans naively thought that the Soviet Union could not create a hydrogen bomb for two reasons: because the USSR did not have enough uranium and the uranium industry and the underdevelopment of Russian computers. Once again, we were underestimated. The pressure problem in the new Sakharov-Ginzburg model was solved by a tricky arrangement of deuterium. He was now not in a separate cylinder, as before, but layer by layer in the plutonium charge itself (hence the new code name "puff"). Preliminary nuclear explosion provided both temperature and pressure to start the fusion reaction. Everything rested only on the very slow and expensive production of artificially obtained tritium. Ginzburg suggested using a light isotope of lithium, which is a natural element, instead of tritium. Teller, on the other hand, was helped to solve the problem of obtaining pressure of millions of atmospheres, necessary for compressing deuterium and tritium, by physicist Stanislav Ulam. Such pressure could be created by powerful radiation converging at one point. This model of the American hydrogen bomb was named Ulama-Teller. The overpressure for tritium and deuterium in this model was achieved not by explosive waves from the detonation of chemical explosives, but by focusing reflected radiation after a preliminary explosion of a small atomic charge inside. The model required a large amount of tritium, and the Americans built new reactors to produce it. They simply did not guess about lithium. They were preparing for the test in a big hurry, because the Soviet Union was literally stepping on its heels. The test of a preliminary device, not a bomb (probably, there was not enough tritium for the bomb) was made by the Americans on November 1, 1952 on a small atoll in the South Pacific Ocean. After the explosion, the atoll was completely destroyed, and the water crater from the explosion was more than a mile in diameter. The force of the explosion was equal to ten megatons of TNT equivalent. This exceeded the power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima by a thousand times.

On August 12, 1953, the Soviet Union tested the world's first hydrogen bomb at the Semipalatinsk test site, the charge power of which, however, was only four hundred kilotons of TNT equivalent. Although the power was small, the successful test had a huge moral and political effect. And it was precisely a movable bomb (RDS-6s), and not a device, like the Americans.

After testing the puff, Sakharov and his comrades joined forces to create a more powerful two-stage hydrogen bomb, similar to the one that the Americans were testing. Intelligence worked in the same mode, so the USSR already had the Ulam-Teller model. It took two years to calculate and manufacture, and on November 22, 1955, the first Soviet two-stage low-yield hydrogen bomb was tested.

The ruling elite of the USSR intended to negate the advantage of the Americans in the number of tests with one, but a very powerful explosion. Sakharov's group was instructed to design hydrogen bomb capacity of 100 megatons. But, apparently due to fears of possible environmental consequences, the power of the bomb was reduced to 50 megatons. Despite this, the tests were carried out with the expectation of the initial power. That is, these were tests of the bomb design, which, in principle, can have a yield of about 100 megatons. In order to understand why this explosion was necessary, it is necessary to understand the political situation that prevailed in the world by that time.

What were the features of the political situation? The warming of relations between the USSR and the USA, which culminated in Khrushchev's visit to the United States of America in September 1959, was replaced by a sharp aggravation a few months later as a result of the scandalous story of F. Powers' spy flight over the territory of the Soviet Union. The reconnaissance aircraft was shot down on May 1, 1960 near Sverdlovsk. As a result, in May 1960, the meeting of the heads of government of the four powers in Paris was disrupted. The return visit of US President D. Eisenhower to the USSR was cancelled. Passions flared up around Cuba, where F. Castro came to power. Moreover, the invasion in the Playa Giron area in April 1961 by Cuban emigrants from the United States and their defeat was a great shock. Awakened Africa was bubbling, clashing the interests of the great powers. But the main confrontation between the USSR and the USA was in Europe: the difficult and seemingly insoluble issue of a German peace settlement, which focused on the status of West Berlin, periodically made itself felt. Unsuccessfully, exhausting negotiations on mutual arms reductions were conducted, which were accompanied by strict demands from the Western powers on inspection and control on the territories of the contracting parties. The negotiations of experts in Geneva on a ban on nuclear tests seemed increasingly bleak, although during 1959 and 1960. the nuclear powers (except France) respected the agreement on unilateral voluntary renunciation of tests of these weapons in connection with the said Geneva talks. Tough propaganda rhetoric between the USSR and the USA has become the norm, in which permanent elements there were mutual accusations and outright threats. Finally, the main event of that period - on August 13, 1961, the infamous Berlin Wall, which caused a storm of protests in the West.

Meanwhile, the Soviet Union was gaining more and more self-confidence. He was the first to test an intercontinental ballistic missile and launched satellites into near-Earth space, carried out a pioneering breakthrough of man into space and created a powerful nuclear potential. The USSR, having at that time great prestige, especially in the third world countries, did not yield to the pressure of the West and itself proceeded to active actions.

Therefore, when by the end of the summer of 1961 passions were especially heated, events began to develop according to a peculiar logic of force. August 31, 1961 Soviet government issued a statement repudiating its voluntary commitment to refrain from testing nuclear weapons and resuming those tests. It reflected the spirit and style of that time. In particular, it was said:

"The Soviet government would not have fulfilled its sacred duty to the peoples of its country, to the peoples of the socialist countries, to all peoples striving for a peaceful life, if, in the face of threats and military preparations that have engulfed the United States and some other NATO countries, it would not have used the available it has the potential to improve the most effective types weapons that can cool hot heads in the capitals of some NATO powers."

The USSR planned a whole series of tests, the culmination of which was to be the explosion of a 50-megaton hydrogen bomb. A. D. Sakharov called the planned explosion "the highlight of the program."

The Soviet government made no secret of the planned superexplosion. On the contrary, it informed the world about the upcoming test and even made public the power of the bomb being created. It is clear that such a "leak of information" met the goals of the power political game. But at the same time it put the creators of the new bomb in a difficult position: its possible "failure" for one reason or another must be ruled out. Moreover, the bomb explosion was bound to hit the "bull's eye": to provide a "custom" capacity of 50 million tons of TNT! Otherwise, instead of the planned political success, the Soviet leadership had to experience an undoubted and sensitive embarrassment.

The first mention of the upcoming grandiose explosion in the USSR appeared on September 8, 1961 on the pages of the American newspaper The New York Times, which reproduced Khrushchev's words:

Nuclear explosion

"Let those who dream of new aggression know that we will have a bomb equal in power to 100 million tons of trinitrotoluene, that we already have such a bomb, and we only have to test an explosive device for it"

A powerful wave of protests swept the world in connection with the announcement of the upcoming test.

These very days in Arzamas-16, the last work was being completed on creating an unprecedented bomb and sending it to the Kola Peninsula to the base of the carrier aircraft. On October 24, the final report was completed, which included the proposed design of the bomb and its theoretical, calculated justification. The provisions contained in it were the starting point for design engineers and bomb makers. The authors of the report were A. D. Sakharov, V. B. Adamsky, Yu. N. Babaev, Yu. N. Smirnov, Yu. A. Trutnev. At the end of the report, it was said: "The successful test result of this product opens up the possibility of designing a product of almost unlimited power."

In parallel with the work on the bomb, a carrier aircraft was being prepared for the combat mission and a special parachute system for the bomb was being worked out. This system for the slow descent of more than 20-ton bombs proved to be unique, and the head of its development was awarded the Lenin Prize.

However, if the parachute system had failed during the experiment, the crews of the aircraft would not have suffered: the bomb included a special mechanism that only triggered the detonation system if the aircraft was already at a safe distance.

The Tu-95 strategic bomber, which was to deliver the bomb to the target, underwent an unusual alteration at the factory. A completely non-standard bomb with a length of about 8 m and a diameter of about 2 m did not fit into the bomb bay of the aircraft. Therefore, part of the fuselage (not power) was cut out and a special lifting mechanism and a bomb attachment device. And yet it was so large that in flight more than half stuck out. The entire body of the aircraft, even the blades of its propellers, were covered with a special white paint that protects against a flash of light during an explosion. The body of the accompanying laboratory aircraft was covered with the same paint.

On a cloudy morning on October 30, 1961, the Tu-95 took off and dropped a hydrogen bomb over Novaya Zemlya, which went down in history forever. The test of the 50 megaton charge was a milestone in the development of nuclear weapons. This test clearly demonstrated the global nature of the impact of a powerful nuclear explosion on the Earth's atmosphere, including such factors as a sharp increase in the background of tritium in the atmosphere, a break of 40-50 minutes. radio communications in the Arctic, a shock wave spread over hundreds of kilometers. Checking the design of the charge confirmed the possibility of creating a charge of any, arbitrarily high power.

But one cannot but take into account that an explosion of such incredible power made it possible to show the all-destructiveness, inhumanity of the created weapons of mass destruction, which reached its apogee in its development. Humanity, politicians should have realized that in case of a tragic miscalculation there will be no winners. No matter how sophisticated the enemy, the other side will have a crushing answer.

The created charge at the same time demonstrated the power of man: the explosion in its power was a phenomenon of almost cosmic scale. No wonder Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov was looking for a worthy application for the charge. He suggested using super-powerful explosions to prevent catastrophic earthquakes, to create nuclear particle accelerators of unprecedented energy in order to penetrate into the depths of matter, to control the movement of space bodies in near-Earth space in the interests of man.

Hypothetically, the need for such a charge may arise if it is necessary to deflect the trajectory of a large meteorite or some other celestial body in case of a threat of its collision with our planet. Prior to the creation of high-yield nuclear warheads and reliable means of their delivery, now also developed, humanity was defenseless in a similar, albeit unlikely, but still possible situation.

In a 50-megaton charge, 97% of the power was due to thermonuclear energy, i.e., the charge was distinguished by a high "purity" and, accordingly, a minimum of the formation of fission fragments that create an unfavorable radiation background in the atmosphere.

It can be stated with full confidence that the use of such weapons in military conditions is inappropriate. The main purpose of this test was the political effect that the leadership of the USSR managed to achieve.

The first Soviet charge for an atomic bomb was successfully tested at the Semipalatinsk test site (Kazakhstan).

This event was preceded by a long and difficult work of physicists. The beginning of work on nuclear fission in the USSR can be considered the 1920s. Since the 1930s, nuclear physics has become one of the main areas of Russian physical science, and in October 1940, for the first time in the USSR, a group of Soviet scientists made a proposal to use atomic energy for weapons purposes, submitting an application to the Invention Department of the Red Army "On the use of uranium as explosive and poisonous substances.

The war that began in June 1941 and the evacuation of scientific institutes involved in the problems of nuclear physics interrupted work on the creation of atomic weapons in the country. But already in the autumn of 1941, the USSR began to receive intelligence information about the conduct of secret intensive research work in the UK and the USA aimed at developing methods for using atomic energy for military purposes and creating explosives of enormous destructive power.

This information forced, despite the war, to resume work on uranium in the USSR. On September 28, 1942, the secret decree of the State Defense Committee No. 2352ss "On the organization of work on uranium" was signed, according to which research on the use of atomic energy was resumed.

In February 1943, Igor Kurchatov was appointed scientific director of work on the atomic problem. In Moscow, headed by Kurchatov, Laboratory No. 2 of the USSR Academy of Sciences (now the National Research Center "Kurchatov Institute") was created, which began to study atomic energy.

Initially, Vyacheslav Molotov, Deputy Chairman of the State Defense Committee (GKO) of the USSR, was in charge of the nuclear problem. But on August 20, 1945 (a few days after the US carried out the atomic bombing of Japanese cities), the GKO decided to create a Special Committee, headed by Lavrenty Beria. He became the curator of the Soviet atomic project.

At the same time, for the direct management of research, design, engineering organizations and industrial enterprises occupied in the Soviet nuclear project, the First Main Directorate under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR was created (later the Ministry of Medium Machine Building of the USSR, now the State Atomic Energy Corporation Rosatom). The former People's Commissar of Ammunition, Boris Vannikov, became the head of the PSU.

In April 1946, at Laboratory No. 2, a design department KB-11 (now the Russian Federal Nuclear Center - VNIIEF) is one of the most secret enterprises for the development of domestic nuclear weapons, whose chief designer was Yuli Khariton. Plant N 550 of the People's Commissariat of Ammunition, which produced artillery shells, was chosen as the base for the deployment of KB-11.

The top-secret object was located 75 kilometers from the city of Arzamas (Gorky region, now Nizhny Novgorod region) on the territory of the former Sarov monastery.

KB-11 was tasked with creating an atomic bomb in two versions. In the first of them, the working substance should be plutonium, in the second - uranium-235. In the middle of 1948, work on the uranium version was discontinued due to its relatively low efficiency compared to the cost of nuclear materials.

The first domestic atomic bomb had the official designation RDS-1. It was deciphered in different ways: “Russia makes itself”, “Motherland gives Stalin”, etc. But in the official resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR of June 21, 1946, it was encrypted as “Special Jet Engine (“C”).

The creation of the first Soviet atomic bomb RDS-1 was carried out taking into account the available materials according to the scheme of the US plutonium bomb tested in 1945. These materials were provided by the Soviet foreign intelligence. An important source of information was Klaus Fuchs, a German physicist, a participant in the work on the US and UK nuclear programs.

Intelligence materials on the American plutonium charge for the atomic bomb made it possible to reduce the time for the creation of the first Soviet charge, although many of the technical solutions of the American prototype were not the best. Even at the initial stages, Soviet specialists could offer best solutions both the charge as a whole and its individual units. Therefore, the first charge for the atomic bomb tested by the USSR was more primitive and less effective than original version charge, proposed by Soviet scientists in early 1949. But in order to guarantee and in a short time to show that the USSR also possesses atomic weapons, it was decided to use a charge created according to the American scheme at the first test.

The charge for the RDS-1 atomic bomb was a multilayer structure in which the transition of the active substance - plutonium to the supercritical state was carried out by compressing it by means of a converging spherical detonation wave in the explosive.

RDS-1 was an aviation atomic bomb weighing 4.7 tons, 1.5 meters in diameter and 3.3 meters long. It was developed in relation to the Tu-4 aircraft, the bomb bay of which allowed the placement of a "product" with a diameter of no more than 1.5 meters. Plutonium was used as the fissile material in the bomb.

For the production of an atomic bomb charge in the city of Chelyabinsk-40 in the South Urals, a plant was built under the conditional number 817 (now the Mayak Production Association). uranium reactor, and a plant for the production of products from plutonium metal.

The plant's reactor 817 was brought to its design capacity in June 1948, and a year later the plant received the necessary amount of plutonium to manufacture the first charge for an atomic bomb.

The site for the test site, where it was planned to test the charge, was chosen in the Irtysh steppe, about 170 kilometers west of Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan. A plain with a diameter of about 20 kilometers was allotted for the test site, surrounded from the south, west and north by low mountains. To the east of this space were small hills.

The construction of the training ground, which was called training ground No. 2 of the Ministry of the Armed Forces of the USSR (later the Ministry of Defense of the USSR), was started in 1947, and by July 1949 it was basically completed.

For testing at the test site, an experimental site with a diameter of 10 kilometers, divided into sectors, was prepared. It was equipped with special facilities to ensure testing, observation and registration of physical research. In the center of the experimental field, a metal lattice tower 37.5 meters high was mounted, designed to install the RDS-1 charge. At a distance of one kilometer from the center, an underground building was built for equipment that registers light, neutron and gamma fluxes of a nuclear explosion. To study the impact of a nuclear explosion on the experimental field, sections of metro tunnels, fragments of airfield runways were built, samples of aircraft, tanks, artillery rocket launchers, ship superstructures were placed various types. To ensure the operation of the physical sector, 44 structures were built at the test site and a cable network was laid with a length of 560 kilometers.

In June-July 1949, two groups of KB-11 workers were sent to the test site with auxiliary equipment and household equipment, and on July 24 a group of specialists arrived there, which was supposed to be directly involved in preparing the atomic bomb for testing.

On August 5, 1949, the government commission for testing the RDS-1 issued a conclusion on the complete readiness of the test site.

On August 21, a plutonium charge and four neutron fuses were delivered to the test site by a special train, one of which was to be used to detonate a military product.

On August 24, 1949, Kurchatov arrived at the training ground. By August 26, all preparatory work at the training ground was completed. The head of the experiment, Kurchatov, ordered the testing of the RDS-1 on August 29 at eight o'clock in the morning local time and the conduct of preparatory operations starting at eight o'clock in the morning on August 27.

On the morning of August 27, the assembly of a combat product began near the central tower. On the afternoon of August 28, the bombers carried out the last full inspection of the tower, prepared the automation for the explosion and checked the demolition cable line.

At four o'clock in the afternoon on August 28, a plutonium charge and neutron fuses were delivered to the workshop near the tower. The final installation of the charge was completed by three o'clock in the morning on August 29. At four o'clock in the morning, the fitters rolled the product out of the assembly shop along the rail track and installed it in the tower's cargo lift cage, and then raised the charge to the top of the tower. By six o'clock, the equipment of the charge with fuses and its connection to the subversive circuit was completed. Then the evacuation of all people from the test field began.

In connection with the worsening weather, Kurchatov decided to postpone the explosion from 8.00 to 7.00.

At 6.35 the operators turned on the power of the automation system. 12 minutes before the explosion, the field machine was turned on. 20 seconds before the explosion, the operator turned on the main connector (switch) connecting the product to the automatic control system. From that moment on, all operations were performed automatic device. Six seconds before the explosion, the main mechanism of the automaton turned on the power of the product and part of the field devices, and one second turned on all the other devices, gave a signal to detonate.

Exactly at seven o'clock on August 29, 1949, the whole area was lit up with a blinding light, which marked that the USSR had successfully completed the development and testing of its first charge for an atomic bomb.

The charge power was 22 kilotons of TNT.

20 minutes after the explosion, two tanks equipped with lead shielding were sent to the center of the field to conduct radiation reconnaissance and inspect the center of the field. The reconnaissance found that all structures in the center of the field had been demolished. A funnel gaped in place of the tower, the soil in the center of the field melted, and a continuous crust of slag formed. Civilian buildings and industrial structures were completely or partially destroyed.

The equipment used in the experiment made it possible to carry out optical observations and measurements of the heat flow, shock wave parameters, characteristics of neutron and gamma radiation, determine the level of radioactive contamination of the area in the area of the explosion and along the trace of the explosion cloud, and study the impact of damaging factors of a nuclear explosion on biological objects.

For the successful development and testing of a charge for an atomic bomb, several closed decrees of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR dated October 29, 1949 awarded orders and medals of the USSR to a large group of leading researchers, designers, and technologists; many were awarded the title of laureates of the Stalin Prize, and more than 30 people received the title of Hero of Socialist Labor.

As a result of the successful test of the RDS-1, the USSR eliminated the American monopoly on the possession of atomic weapons, becoming the second nuclear power in the world.