Preparation for school

Who is the developer of the atomic bomb in the USSR. The creators of the atomic bomb - who are they. History of failure and triumph

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

This event was preceded by a long and difficult work of physicists. The 1920s can be considered the beginning of work on nuclear fission in the USSR. Since 1930s nuclear physics becomes one of the main directions of domestic physical science, and in October 1940, for the first time in the USSR, a group of Soviet scientists came up with a proposal to use atomic energy for weapons purposes, submitting an application to the department of inventions of the Red Army "On the use of uranium as an explosive and poisonous substance."

The war that began in June 1941 and the evacuation of scientific institutes dealing with the problems of nuclear physics interrupted work on the creation of atomic weapons in the country. But already in the fall of 1941, the USSR began to receive intelligence information about the conduct of secret intensive research work in Great Britain and the United States aimed at developing methods of 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, a secret resolution 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 supervisor 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, the general management of the atomic problem was carried out by the deputy chairman of the State Defense Committee (GKO) of the USSR, Vyacheslav Molotov. But on August 20, 1945 (a few days after the US atomic bombing of Japanese cities), the State Defense Committee decided to create a Special Committee, headed by Lavrenty Beria. He became the curator of the Soviet atomic project.

At the same time, the First Main Directorate under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR (later the Ministry of Medium Machine Building of the USSR, now the State Atomic Energy Corporation Rosatom) was created to directly manage research, design, design organizations and industrial enterprises involved in the Soviet atomic project. Boris Vannikov, the former People's Commissar of Ammunition, became the head of the PGU.

In April 1946, at Laboratory No. 2, the KB-11 design bureau (now the Russian Federal Nuclear Center - VNIIEF) was created - one of the most secret enterprises for the development of domestic nuclear weapons, the chief designer of which was Yuli Khariton. Plant 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 the 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 mid-1948, work on the uranium option 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 to Stalin", etc. But in the official decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR of June 21, 1946, it was coded 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 Soviet foreign intelligence. An important source of information was Klaus Fuchs, a German physicist who participated in the nuclear programs of the United States and Great Britain.

Intelligence materials on the American plutonium charge for the atomic bomb made it possible to shorten the time for creating 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 the best solutions for both the charge as a whole and its individual units. Therefore, the first charge for an atomic bomb tested by the USSR was more primitive and less effective than the original version of the charge proposed by Soviet scientists at the beginning of 1949. But in order to guarantee and show in a short time 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 transfer of the active substance, plutonium, to the supercritical state was carried out due to its compression by means of a converging spherical detonation wave in an explosive.

The 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 charge of a bomb in the city of Chelyabinsk-40 in the South Urals, a plant was built under the conditional number 817 (now FSUE "Production Association" Mayak "). The plant consisted of the first Soviet industrial reactor for the production of plutonium, a radiochemical plant for the separation of plutonium from irradiated a uranium reactor, and a plant for the production of plutonium metal products.

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 for the manufacture of the first charge for the 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 set aside for the landfill, surrounded by low mountains from the south, west and north. There were small hills to the east of this area.

The construction of the training ground, which received the name training ground No. 2 of the Ministry of the Armed Forces of the USSR (later the Ministry of Defense of the USSR), began 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 was prepared, divided into sectors. It was equipped with special facilities for testing, observation and registration of physical research. In the center of the experimental field, a 37.5 meter high metal lattice tower was mounted, designed to install the RDS-1 charge. At a distance of one kilometer from the center, an underground building was erected for equipment recording the 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, and ship superstructures of various types were placed. To support the work of the physical sector, 44 structures were built at the landfill and a cable network was laid with a length of 560 kilometers.

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

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

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

On August 24, 1949, Kurchatov arrived at the test site. By August 26, all preparatory work at the test site 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 to carry out preparatory operations, starting at eight o'clock in the morning on August 27.

On the morning of August 27, near the central tower, the assembly of a combat product began. In the afternoon of August 28, the demolition team conducted the last full inspection of the tower, prepared the automatic equipment for detonation and checked the demolition cable line.

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

Due to the worsening weather, Kurchatov decided to postpone the explosion from 8.00 to 7.00.

At 6.35 am, the operators turned on the power to the automation system. The field machine was turned on 12 minutes before the explosion. 20 seconds before the explosion, the operator turned on the main connector (switch) connecting the product with the control automation system. From that moment on, all operations were performed by an automatic device. Six seconds before the explosion, the main mechanism of the machine turned on the power supply of the product and part of the field devices, and in one second it turned on all the other devices and issued a detonation signal.

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

The charge capacity was 22 kilotons in TNT equivalent.

Twenty minutes after the explosion, two tanks equipped with lead shielding were sent to the center of the field to conduct radiation reconnaissance and survey the center of the field. Reconnaissance established that all structures in the center of the field had been demolished. A funnel gaped in the place of the tower, the soil in the center of the field melted, and a solid crust of slag formed. Civil 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 flux, shock wave parameters, characteristics of neutron and gamma radiation, determine the level of radioactive contamination of the area in the explosion area and along the trail of the explosion cloud, and study the effect of the 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 of 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.

The question of the creators of the first Soviet nuclear bomb is quite controversial and requires a more detailed study, but about who in reality father of the Soviet atomic bomb, there are several ingrained opinions. Most physicists and historians believe that the main contribution to the creation of Soviet nuclear weapons was made by Igor Vasilievich Kurchatov. However, some are of the opinion that without Yuli Borisovich Khariton, the founder of Arzamas-16 and the creator of the industrial basis for the production of enriched fissile isotopes, the first test of this type of weapon in the Soviet Union would have dragged on for several more years.

Let us consider the historical sequence of research and development work on the creation of a practical model of an atomic bomb, leaving aside theoretical studies of fissile materials and the conditions for the occurrence of a chain reaction, without which a nuclear explosion is impossible.

For the first time a series of applications for obtaining copyright certificates for the invention (patents) of the atomic bomb was filed in 1940 by the employees of the Kharkov Institute of Physics and Technology F. Lange, V. Spinel and V. Maslov. The authors considered the issues and proposed solutions for the enrichment of uranium and its use as an explosive. The proposed bomb had a classic (cannon-type) detonation scheme, which was later, with some modifications, used to initiate a nuclear explosion in American uranium-based nuclear bombs.

The outbreak of the Great Patriotic War slowed down theoretical and experimental research in the field of nuclear physics, and the largest centers (Kharkov Institute of Physics and Technology and Radium Institute - Leningrad) ceased their activities and were partially evacuated.

Beginning in September 1941, the intelligence agencies of the NKVD and the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Red Army began to receive an increasing amount of information about the special interest shown in the British military circles in the creation of explosives based on fissile isotopes. In May 1942, the Main Intelligence Directorate, summarizing the materials received, reported to the State Defense Committee (GKO) on the military purpose of the nuclear research being carried out.

Around the same time, Lieutenant-Technician Georgy Nikolaevich Flerov, who in 1940 was one of the discoverers of the spontaneous fission of uranium nuclei, wrote a letter personally to I.V. Stalin. In his message, the future academician, one of the creators of Soviet nuclear weapons, draws attention to the fact that publications on works related to the fission of the atomic nucleus have disappeared from the scientific press in Germany, Great Britain and the United States. According to the scientist, this may indicate a reorientation of "pure" science into a practical military field.

In October - November 1942, the foreign intelligence of the NKVD reports to L.P. Beria all the available information about work in the field of nuclear research, obtained by illegal intelligence agents in England and the United States, on the basis of which the People's Commissar writes a memorandum to the head of state.

At the end of September 1942 I.V. Stalin signed a decree of the State Defense Committee on the resumption and intensification of "work on uranium", and in February 1943, after studying the materials presented by L.P. Beria, a decision is made to transfer all research on the creation of nuclear weapons (atomic bomb) into a "practical channel". General management and coordination of all types of work were entrusted to the Deputy Chairman of the State Defense Committee V.M. Molotov, the scientific management of the project was entrusted to I.V. Kurchatov. The management of the search for deposits and the extraction of uranium ore was entrusted to A.P. Zavenyagina, M.G. Pervukhin, and the People's Commissar of Non-Ferrous Metallurgy P.F. Lomako "trusted" by 1944 to accumulate 0.5 tons of metallic (enriched to the required conditions) uranium.

At this, the first stage (the deadlines for which were disrupted), providing for the creation of an atomic bomb in the USSR, was completed.

After the United States dropped atomic bombs on Japanese cities, the leadership of the USSR saw firsthand the lag scientific research and practical work on the creation of nuclear weapons from their competitors. To intensify and create an atomic bomb as soon as possible, on August 20, 1945, a special GKO decree was issued on the creation of Special Committee No. 1, whose functions included the organization and coordination of all types of work on the creation of a nuclear bomb. The head of this extraordinary body with unlimited powers is L.P. Beria, the scientific leadership is entrusted to I.V. Kurchatov. Direct management of all research, development and manufacturing enterprises was supposed to carry out the People's Commissar of Armaments B.L. Vannikov.

Due to the fact that scientific, theoretical and experimental studies were completed, intelligence data on the organization of the industrial production of uranium and plutonium were obtained, the reconnaissance officers obtained the schemes of American atomic bombs, the greatest difficulty was the transfer of all types of work to an industrial basis. To create enterprises for the production of plutonium, the city of Chelyabinsk - 40 was built from scratch (scientific supervisor IV Kurchatov). In the village of Sarov (the future Arzamas - 16), a plant was built for the assembly and production of atomic bombs themselves on an industrial scale (scientific supervisor - chief designer Yu.B. Khariton).

Thanks to the optimization of all types of work and strict control over them by L.P. Beria, who, however, did not interfere with the creative development of the ideas laid down in the projects, in July 1946 technical specifications were developed for the creation of the first two Soviet atomic bombs:

"RDS - 1" - a bomb with a plutonium charge, the detonation of which was carried out according to the implosive type;
"RDS - 2" - a bomb with a cannon detonation of a uranium charge.

The scientific leader of the work on the creation of both types of nuclear weapons was I.V. Kurchatov.

Paternity rights

Tests of the first atomic bomb RDS-1 created in the USSR (the abbreviation in various sources stands for “jet engine C” or “Russia makes itself”) took place in the last days of August 1949 in Semipalatinsk under the direct supervision of Yu.B. Khariton. The power of the nuclear charge was 22 kilotons. However, from the point of view of modern copyright law, it is impossible to ascribe the paternity of this product to any of the Russian (Soviet) citizens. Earlier, when developing the first practical model suitable for military use, the Government of the USSR and the leadership of Special Project No. 1 decided to copy the domestic implosive bomb with a plutonium charge as much as possible from the American Fat Man prototype dropped on the Japanese city of Nagasaki. Thus, the "paternity" of the first nuclear bomb of the USSR belongs rather to General Leslie Groves - the military leader of the "Manhattan" project and Robert Oppenheimer, known throughout the world as the "father of the atomic bomb" and who carried out scientific leadership over the project Manhattan. The main difference between the Soviet model and the American one lies in the use of domestic electronics in the detonation system and in changing the aerodynamic shape of the bomb body.

The first "purely" Soviet atomic bomb can be considered the product "RDS - 2". Despite the fact that it was originally planned to copy the American uranium prototype "Malysh", the Soviet uranium atomic bomb "RDS-2" was created in an implosive version, which had no analogues at that time. L.P. Beria - overall project management, I.V. Kurchatov is the scientific supervisor of all types of work and Yu.B. Khariton is a scientific advisor and chief designer responsible for making a practical bomb and testing it.

Speaking about who is the father of the first Soviet atomic bomb, one must not overlook the fact that both RDS-1 and RDS-2 were blown up at the test site. The first atomic bomb dropped from a Tu - 4 bomber was the RDS - 3 product. Its design repeated the RDS-2 implosive bomb, but had a combined uranium-plutonium charge, which made it possible to increase its power, with the same dimensions, up to 40 kilotons. Therefore, in many publications, Academician Igor Kurchatov is considered the "scientific" father of the first atomic bomb actually dropped from an airplane, since his colleague in the scientific department, Julius Khariton, was categorically against making any changes. The fact that in the entire history of the USSR L.P. Beria and IV Kurchatov were the only ones who in 1949 were awarded the title of Honorary Citizen of the USSR - "... for the implementation of the Soviet atomic project, the creation of the atomic bomb."

Long and difficult work of physicists. The 1920s can be considered the beginning of work on nuclear fission in the USSR. Since the 1930s, nuclear physics has become one of the main directions of domestic physical science, and in October 1940, for the first time in the USSR, a group of Soviet scientists came forward with 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 substance ".

In April 1946, at Laboratory No. 2, the KB-11 design bureau (now the Russian Federal Nuclear Center - VNIIEF) was created - one of the most secret enterprises for the development of domestic nuclear weapons, the chief designer of which was Yuliy Khariton. Plant 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 the Nizhny Novgorod region) on the territory of the former Sarov monastery.

The charge for the RDS-1 atomic bomb was made in the form of a multilayer structure, in which the transfer of the active substance, plutonium, to the supercritical state was carried out due to its compression by means of a converging spherical detonation wave in an explosive.

The 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.

Structurally, the RDS-1 bomb consisted of a nuclear charge; explosive device and automatic charge detonation systems with safety systems; ballistic body of the bomb, which housed a nuclear charge and automatic detonation.

In the center of the experimental field, a 37.5 meter high metal lattice tower was mounted, designed to install the RDS-1 charge.

At a distance of one kilometer from the center, an underground building was erected for equipment recording the 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, and ship superstructures of various types were placed. To support the work of the physical sector, 44 structures were built at the landfill and a cable network was laid with a length of 560 kilometers.

On August 5, 1949, the government commission for testing the RDS-1 gave an opinion on the complete readiness of the landfill and proposed to conduct a detailed workout of the assembly and detonation of the product within 15 days. The test was scheduled for the last days of August. Igor Kurchatov was appointed scientific supervisor of the test.

In the period from 10 to 26 August, 10 rehearsals were held on the control of the test field and equipment for detonating the charge, as well as three training exercises with the launch of all equipment and four detonations of full-scale explosives with an aluminum ball from automatic detonation.

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

On August 24, Kurchatov arrived at the test site. By August 26, all preparatory work at the test site was completed.

Kurchatov gave the order to test the RDS-1 on August 29 at eight o'clock in the morning local time.

At four o'clock in the afternoon on August 28, a plutonium charge and neutron fuses to it were delivered to the workshop near the tower. At about 12 at night, in the assembly shop on the site in the center of the field, the final assembly of the product began - the attachment of the main unit, that is, a charge from plutonium and a neutron fuse, began. At three in the morning on August 29, the installation of the product was completed.

By six o'clock in the morning, the charge was raised to the test tower, its equipment with fuses and connection to the subversive scheme was completed.

Due to the worsening weather, it was decided to postpone the explosion one hour earlier.

At 6.35 am, the operators turned on the power to the automation system. At 6.48 minutes the field machine was turned on. 20 seconds before the explosion, the main connector (switch) was turned on, connecting the RDS-1 product with the control automation system.

At exactly seven o'clock in the morning on August 29, 1949, the entire area was lit up with a dazzling light, which marked that the USSR had successfully completed the development and testing of its first atomic bomb charge.

The energy release of the explosion was 22 kilotons (in TNT equivalent).

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 of 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 the direct developers of the nuclear charge 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.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from RIA Novosti and open sources

Nuclear (or atomic) weapons are explosive weapons based on the uncontrolled fission chain reaction of heavy nuclei and thermonuclear fusion reactions. To carry out a chain fission reaction, either uranium-235 or plutonium-239, or, in some cases, uranium-233 are used. Refers to weapons of mass destruction along with biological and chemical. The power of a nuclear charge is measured in TNT equivalent, usually expressed in kilotons and megatons.

Nuclear weapons were first tested on July 16, 1945 in the United States at the Trinity test site near Alamogordo, New Mexico. In the same year, the United States used it in Japan in the bombing of the cities of Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9.

In the USSR, the first test of an atomic bomb - RDS-1 products - was carried out on August 29, 1949 at the Semipalatinsk test site in Kazakhstan. The RDS-1 was a "drop-shaped" aeronautical atomic bomb, weighing 4.6 tons, 1.5 m in diameter and 3.7 m long. Plutonium was used as the fissile material. The bomb was detonated at 7.00 local time (4.00 Moscow time) on an assembled metal lattice tower 37.5 m high, located in the center of the experimental field with a diameter of about 20 km. The explosion power was 20 kilotons in TNT equivalent.

The RDS-1 product (the documents indicated the decoding "jet engine" C ") was created at Design Bureau No. 11 (now the Russian Federal Nuclear Center - All-Russian Research Institute of Experimental Physics, RFNC-VNIIEF, the city of Sarov), which was organized for creation of the atomic bomb in April 1946. Work on the creation of the bomb was supervised by Igor Kurchatov (scientific supervisor of work on the atomic problem since 1943; organizer of the bomb test) and Julius Khariton (chief designer of KB-11 in 1946-1959).

Research on atomic energy was carried out in Russia (later the USSR) back in the 1920s-1930s. In 1932, a nuclear group was formed at the Leningrad Physico-Technical Institute, headed by the director of the institute, Abram Ioffe, with the participation of Igor Kurchatov (deputy head of the group). In 1940, the Uranium Commission of the USSR Academy of Sciences was created, which in September of the same year approved the work program for the first Soviet uranium project. However, with the beginning of the Great Patriotic War most research on the use of atomic energy in the USSR was curtailed or discontinued.

Research on the use of atomic energy resumed in 1942 after receiving intelligence information about the deployment by the Americans to create an atomic bomb ("Manhattan Project"): on September 28, the State Defense Committee (GKO) issued an order "On the organization of work on uranium."

On November 8, 1944, the State Defense Committee decided to create a large uranium mining enterprise in Central Asia based on the deposits of Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. In May 1945, the first enterprise in the USSR for the extraction and processing of uranium ores, Combine No. 6 (later Leninabad Mining and Metallurgical Combine), began operating in Tajikistan.

After the explosions of American atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, by a GKO decree of August 20, 1945, a Special Committee under the GKO headed by Lavrenty Beria was created to "guide all work on the use of the atomic energy of uranium", including the production of the atomic bomb.

In accordance with the decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR of June 21, 1946, Khariton prepared a "tactical and technical assignment for an atomic bomb", which marked the beginning of full-scale work on the first domestic atomic charge.

In 1947, 170 km west of Semipalatinsk was created "Object-905" for testing nuclear charges (in 1948 it was transformed into a training ground number 2 of the USSR Ministry of Defense, later became known as Semipalatinsk; in August 1991 it was closed). The construction of the test site was completed by August 1949 for the bomb test.

The first test of the Soviet atomic bomb destroyed the US nuclear monopoly. The Soviet Union became the second nuclear power in the world.

The message about the test of nuclear weapons in the USSR was published by TASS on September 25, 1949. And on October 29, a closed resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR "On rewarding and bonuses for outstanding scientific discoveries and technical achievements in the use of atomic energy" was issued. For the development and testing of the first Soviet atomic bomb, six KB-11 workers were awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor: Pavel Zernov (KB director), Julius Khariton, Kirill Shchelkin, Yakov Zeldovich, Vladimir Alferov, Georgy Flerov. Deputy Chief Designer Nikolai Dukhov received the second Gold Star of the Hero of Socialist Labor. 29 employees of the bureau were awarded the Order of Lenin, 15 - the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, 28 became laureates of the Stalin Prize.

Today, the model of the bomb (its body, the RDS-1 charge and the remote control used to detonate the charge) is kept in the RFNC-VNIIEF Nuclear Weapons Museum.

In 2009, the UN General Assembly declared August 29 as the International Day against Nuclear Tests.

A total of 2,062 nuclear weapons tests have been carried out in the world, which eight states have. The United States accounts for 1,032 explosions (1945-1992). The United States of America is the only country to have used this weapon. The USSR conducted 715 tests (1949-1990). The last explosion took place on October 24, 1990 at the Novaya Zemlya test site. In addition to the USA and the USSR, nuclear weapons were created and tested in Great Britain - 45 (1952-1991), France - 210 (1960-1996), China - 45 (1964-1996), India - 6 (1974, 1998), Pakistan - 6 (1998) and DPRK - 3 (2006, 2009, 2013).

In 1970, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) entered into force. Currently, 188 countries of the world are its participants. The document was not signed by India (in 1998, it introduced a unilateral moratorium on nuclear tests and agreed to place its nuclear facilities under IAEA control) and Pakistan (in 1998, it introduced a unilateral moratorium on nuclear tests). The DPRK, having signed the agreement in 1985, withdrew from it in 2003.

In 1996, the general cessation of nuclear tests was enshrined in the framework of the international Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). After that, only three countries carried out nuclear explosions - India, Pakistan and North Korea.

The emergence of atomic (nuclear) weapons was caused by a mass of objective and subjective factors. Objectively, they came to the creation of atomic weapons thanks to the rapid development of science, which began with fundamental discoveries in the field of physics, in the first half of the twentieth century. The main subjective factor was the military-political situation, when the states of the anti-Hitler coalition began an unspoken race to develop such powerful weapons. Today we will find out who invented the atomic bomb, how it developed in the world and in the Soviet Union, and we will also get acquainted with its device and the consequences of its use.

Making the atomic bomb

From a scientific point of view, the year of the creation of the atomic bomb was the distant year 1896. It was then that the French physicist A. Becquerel discovered the radioactivity of uranium. Subsequently, the chain reaction of uranium came to be seen as a source of enormous energy, and is an easy basis for the development of the most dangerous weapons in the world. Nevertheless, Becquerel is rarely mentioned when it comes to who invented the atomic bomb.

Over the next several decades, alpha, beta and gamma rays were discovered by scientists from all over the world. At the same time, a large number of radioactive isotopes were discovered, the law of radioactive decay was formulated and the beginning of the study of nuclear isomerism was laid.

In the 1940s, scientists discovered a neuron and a positron and for the first time carried out the fission of the nucleus of a uranium atom, accompanied by the absorption of neurons. It was this discovery that became a turning point in history. In 1939, the French physicist Frederic Joliot-Curie patented the world's first nuclear bomb, which he developed with his wife, professing a purely scientific interest. It is Joliot-Curie who is considered the creator of the atomic bomb, despite the fact that he was a staunch defender of world peace. In 1955, he, along with Einstein, Born and a number of other famous scientists, organized the Pugwash Movement, whose members advocated for peace and disarmament.

Rapidly developing, atomic weapons have become an unprecedented military-political phenomenon that allows ensuring the safety of their owner and minimizing the capabilities of other weapons systems.

How does a nuclear bomb work?

Structurally, an atomic bomb consists of a large number of components, the main of which are the body and automation. The body is designed to protect automation and nuclear charges from mechanical, thermal, and other influences. Automation controls the timing of the explosion.

It includes:

Emergency detonation.
Cocking and safety devices.
Power supply.
Various sensors.

Atomic bombs are transported to the attack site using missiles (anti-aircraft, ballistic, or cruise missiles). Nuclear ammunition can be part of a land mine, torpedo, air bomb and other elements. For atomic bombs use various systems detonation. The simplest is a device in which a projectile hitting a target, causing the formation of a supercritical mass, stimulates an explosion.

Nuclear weapons can be of large, medium and small caliber. Explosion power is usually expressed in TNT equivalent. Small-caliber atomic shells have a yield of several thousand tons of TNT. Medium caliber ones already correspond to tens of thousands of tons, and the capacity of large caliber reaches up to millions of tons.

Principle of operation

The principle of operation of a nuclear bomb is based on the use of energy released during a nuclear chain reaction. During this process, heavy particles are divided, and light ones are synthesized. When an atomic bomb explodes, in the shortest period of time, over a small area, a huge amount of energy is released. That is why such bombs are classified as weapons of mass destruction.

In the area of a nuclear explosion, two key areas are distinguished: the center and the epicenter. In the center of the explosion, the process of energy release takes place directly. The epicenter is the projection of this process onto the earth or water surface. The energy of a nuclear explosion, projected onto the ground, can lead to seismic shocks that propagate over a considerable distance. Harm environment these shocks bring only within a radius of several hundred meters from the point of explosion.

Damaging factors

Nuclear weapons have the following factors of destruction:

Radioactive contamination.
Light radiation.
Shock wave.
Electromagnetic pulse.
Penetrating radiation.

The consequences of the explosion of an atomic bomb are destructive for all living things. Due to the release huge amount light and warm energy, the explosion of a nuclear projectile is accompanied by a bright flash. In terms of power, this flash is several times stronger than the sun's rays, so there is a danger of damage from light and heat radiation within a radius of several kilometers from the point of explosion.

Another most dangerous damaging factor of atomic weapons is the radiation generated during the explosion. It works only a minute after the explosion, but has maximum penetrating power.

The shock wave has the strongest destructive effect. She literally erases everything that stands in her way from the face of the earth. Penetrating radiation is dangerous for all living things. In humans, it causes the development of radiation sickness. Well, the electromagnetic impulse is harmful only to technology. In the aggregate, the damaging factors of an atomic explosion carry a tremendous danger.

First tests

Throughout the history of the atomic bomb, America has shown the greatest interest in its creation. At the end of 1941, the country's leadership allocated a huge amount of money and resources for this direction. The project leader was named Robert Oppenheimer, who is considered by many to be the creator of the atomic bomb. In fact, he was the first to bring the scientists' idea to life. As a result, on July 16, 1945, the first atomic bomb test took place in the New Mexico desert. Then America decided that in order to completely end the war, it needed to defeat Japan, an ally of Nazi Germany. The Pentagon quickly selected targets for the first nuclear attacks, which were to be a vivid illustration of the power of American weapons.

On August 6, 1945, the US atomic bomb, cynically dubbed "The Kid", was dropped on the city of Hiroshima. The shot turned out to be just perfect - the bomb exploded at a height of 200 meters from the ground, due to which its blast wave caused terrible damage to the city. In districts far from the center, coal stoves were overturned, causing severe fires.

The bright flash was followed by a heat wave, which in 4 seconds of action managed to melt the tiles on the roofs of houses and incinerate the telegraph poles. The heat wave was followed by a shock wave. The wind that swept through the city at a speed of about 800 km / h, demolished everything in its path. Of the 76,000 buildings located in the city before the explosion, about 70,000 were completely destroyed. A few minutes after the explosion, rain began to fall from the sky, large drops of which were black. The rain fell due to the formation of a huge amount of condensate, consisting of steam and ash, in the cold layers of the atmosphere.

People who were hit by a fireball within a radius of 800 meters from the point of explosion turned into dust. Those who were a little further from the explosion burned their skin, the remnants of which were ripped off by the shock wave. The black radioactive rain left incurable burns on the skin of the survivors. Those who miraculously managed to escape, soon began to show signs of radiation sickness: nausea, fever and bouts of weakness.

Three days after the bombing of Hiroshima, America attacked another Japanese city - Nagasaki. The second explosion had the same disastrous consequences as the first.

In a matter of seconds, two atomic bombs killed hundreds of thousands of people. The shock wave practically wiped out Hiroshima. More than half of the local residents (about 240 thousand people) died immediately from their wounds. In the city of Nagasaki, about 73 thousand people died from the explosion. Many of those who survived were exposed to severe radiation, which caused infertility, radiation sickness and cancer. As a result, some of the survivors died in terrible agony. The use of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki illustrated the terrible power of this weapon.

We already know who invented the atomic bomb, how it works and what consequences it can lead to. Now we will find out how things were with nuclear weapons in the USSR.

After the bombing of Japanese cities, JV Stalin realized that the creation of the Soviet atomic bomb was a matter of national security. On August 20, 1945, a committee on nuclear energy was created in the USSR, and L. Beria was appointed its head.

It is worth noting that work in this direction has been carried out in the Soviet Union since 1918, and in 1938, a special commission on the atomic nucleus was created at the Academy of Sciences. With the outbreak of World War II, all work in this direction was frozen.

In 1943, intelligence officers of the USSR transferred from England materials of closed scientific papers in the field of atomic energy. These materials illustrated that the work of foreign scientists on the creation of the atomic bomb has made significant progress. At the same time, American residents facilitated the introduction of reliable Soviet agents into major US nuclear research centers. Agents passed information about new developments to Soviet scientists and engineers.

Technical task

When in 1945 the issue of creating a Soviet nuclear bomb became almost a priority, one of the project leaders, Yuri Khariton, drew up a plan for the development of two versions of the projectile. On June 1, 1946, the plan was signed by senior management.

According to the assignment, the designers needed to build an RDS (Special Jet Engine) of two models:

RDS-1. A plutonium-charged bomb that is detonated by spherical compression. The device was borrowed from the Americans.
RDS-2. A cannon bomb with two uranium charges converging in the barrel of a cannon before a critical mass is created.

In the history of the notorious RDS, the most common, albeit comic, formulation was the phrase "Russia does it itself." It was invented by the deputy of Y. Khariton, K. Shchelkin. This phrase very accurately conveys the essence of the work, at least for the RDS-2.

When America learned that the Soviet Union possessed the secrets of creating nuclear weapons, it had a desire for an early escalation of the preventive war. In the summer of 1949, the Troyan plan appeared, according to which, on January 1, 1950, it was planned to start hostilities against the USSR. Then the date of the attack was postponed to the beginning of 1957, but on the condition that all NATO countries join it.

Testing

When information about America's plans came through intelligence channels in the USSR, the work of Soviet scientists accelerated significantly. Western experts believed that in the USSR atomic weapons would be created no earlier than 1954-1955. In fact, the tests of the first atomic bomb in the USSR took place already in August 1949. On August 29, the RDS-1 device was blown up at the Semipalatinsk test site. A large team of scientists took part in its creation, headed by Igor Vasilievich Kurchatov. The design of the charge belonged to the Americans, and the electronic equipment was created from scratch. The first atomic bomb in the USSR exploded with a power of 22 Kt.

Due to the likelihood of a retaliatory strike, the Troyan plan, which involved a nuclear attack on 70 Soviet cities, was thwarted. The tests at Semipalatinsk marked the end of the American monopoly on the possession of atomic weapons. The invention of Igor Vasilyevich Kurchatov completely destroyed the military plans of America and NATO and prevented the development of another world war. This is how the era of peace on Earth began, which exists under the threat of absolute destruction.

"Nuclear club" of the world

Today, not only America and Russia have atomic weapons, but also a number of other states. The totality of countries possessing such weapons is conventionally called the "nuclear club".

It includes:

America (since 1945).
USSR, and now Russia (since 1949).
England (since 1952).
France (since 1960).
China (since 1964).
India (since 1974).
Pakistan (since 1998).
Korea (since 2006).

Israel also has nuclear weapons, although the country's leadership refuses to comment on their presence. In addition, American nuclear weapons are located on the territory of NATO countries (Italy, Germany, Turkey, Belgium, the Netherlands, Canada) and allies (Japan, South Korea, despite the official refusal).

Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan, which owned part of the USSR's nuclear weapons, donated their bombs to Russia after the collapse of the Union. She became the only heir to the USSR's nuclear arsenal.

Conclusion

Today we have learned who invented the atomic bomb and what it is. Summarizing the above, we can conclude that today nuclear weapons are the most powerful instrument of global politics that has become firmly established in relations between countries. On the one hand, it is an effective deterrent, and on the other, a convincing argument for preventing military confrontation and strengthening peaceful relations between states. Atomic weapons are a symbol of an entire era, which requires particularly careful handling.