Nuclear bomb: atomic weapons to protect the world. Creation and first test of the atomic bomb in the USSR

Since the first atomic explosion code name Trinity, July 16, 1945, almost two thousand tests of atomic bombs were carried out, and most of of which took place in the 60-70s.
When this technology was new, tests were carried out frequently, and they were quite a spectacle.

All of them led to the development of newer and more powerful nuclear weapons. But since the 1990s, governments different countries began to limit future tests - take, for example, the US moratorium and the UN Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

A selection of photographs from the first 30 years of atomic bomb testing:

Upshot-Knothole Grable nuclear test explosion in Nevada on May 25, 1953. A 280-millimeter nuclear projectile was fired from the M65 cannon, detonated in the air - about 150 meters above the ground - and produced an explosion with a yield of 15 kilotons. (U.S. Department of Defense)

Open wiring of a nuclear device codenamed The Gadget (unofficial name of the Trinity project) - the first atomic test explosion. The device was prepared for the explosion that occurred on July 16, 1945. (U.S. Department of Defense)

Shadow of Los Alamos National Laboratory Director Jay Robert Oppenheimer overseeing the assembly of the Gadget projectile. (U.S. Department of Defense)

The 200-ton steel Jumbo container used in the Trinity project was made to recover the plutonium in case the explosive suddenly started a chain reaction. In the end, Jumbo was not useful, but he was placed near the epicenter to measure the effects of the explosion. Jumbo survived the explosion, but his supporting frame did not. (U.S. Department of Defense)

The growing fireball and blast wave of the Trinity explosion 0.025 seconds after the explosion on July 16, 1945. (U.S. Department of Defense)

Long exposure photo of the Trinity explosion a few seconds after detonation. (U.S. Department of Defense)

The fireball of the "fungus" of the world's first atomic explosion. (U.S. Department of Defense)

US troops watch an explosion during Operation Crossroads at Bikini Atoll on July 25, 1946. It was the fifth nuclear explosion after the first two tests and two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (U.S. Department of Defense)

A nuclear mushroom and a column of spray in the sea during a nuclear bomb test at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. This was the first underwater atomic test explosion. After the explosion, several former warships ran aground. (AP Photo)

A huge nuclear mushroom after a bomb exploded on Bikini Atoll on July 25, 1946. The dark dots in the foreground are ships placed specifically in the path of the blast wave to test what it would do to them. (AP Photo)

On November 16, 1952, a B-36H bomber dropped an atomic bomb on the northern part of Runit Island on Enewetak Atoll. The result was an explosion with a yield of 500 kilotons and a diameter of 450 meters. (U.S. Department of Defense)

Operation Greenhouse took place in the spring of 1951. It consisted of four explosions at the Pacific Nuclear Test Site in the Pacific Ocean. This is a photo of the third test, codenamed "George", conducted on May 9, 1951. It was the first explosion to burn deuterium and tritium. Power - 225 kilotons. (U.S. Department of Defense)

The "rope tricks" of a nuclear explosion, captured less than one millisecond after the explosion. During Operation Tumbler Snapper in 1952, this nuclear device was suspended 90 meters above the Nevada desert on mooring cables. As the plasma spread, the emitted energy overheated and vaporized the cables above the fireball, resulting in these “spikes.” (U.S. Department of Defense)

During Operation Upshot Knothole, a group of mannequins were placed in the dining room of a house to test the effects of a nuclear explosion on houses and people. March 15, 1953. (AP Photo/Dick Strobel)

This is what happened to them after the nuclear explosion. (U.S. Department of Defense)

In the same house number two, on the second floor, there was another mannequin lying on the bed. In the window of the house you can see a 90-meter steel tower, on which it will soon explode nuclear bomb. The purpose of the test explosion is to show people what would happen if a nuclear explosion occurred in an American city. (AP Photo/Dick Strobel)

Damaged bedroom, windows and blankets that disappeared to God knows where after a test explosion atomic bomb March 17, 1953. (U.S. Department of Defense)

Mannequins representing a typical American family, in the living room of Test House No. 2 at the Nevada Nuclear Test Site. (AP Photo)

The same “family” after the explosion. Some were scattered throughout the living room, others simply disappeared. (U.S. Department of Defense)

During Operation Plumb at the Nevada nuclear test site on August 30, 1957, a shell detonated from a balloon in the Yucca Flat Desert at an altitude of 228 meters. (National Nuclear Security Administration/Nevada Site Office)

Test explosion hydrogen bomb during Operation Redwing over Bikini Atoll on May 20, 1956. (AP Photo)

Ionization glow around a cooling fireball in the Yucca Desert at 4:30 a.m. on July 15, 1957. (National Nuclear Security Administration/Nevada Site Office)

The flash of an air-to-air missile's nuclear warhead exploding at 7:30 a.m. on July 19, 1957, at Indian Springs Air Force Base, 48 km from the explosion site. In the foreground is the Scorpion aircraft of the same type. (National Nuclear Security Administration/Nevada Site Office)

The fireball of the Priscilla shell on June 24, 1957 during the Plumb series of operations. (National Nuclear Security Administration/Nevada Site Office)

NATO officials observe an explosion during Operation Boltzmann on May 28, 1957. (National Nuclear Security Administration/Nevada Site Office)

The tail section of a US Navy airship after a nuclear weapons test in Nevada on August 7, 1957. The airship was floating in free flight, more than 8 km from the epicenter of the explosion, when it was overtaken by the blast wave. There was no one in the airship. (National Nuclear Security Administration/Nevada Site Office)

Observers during Operation Hardtack I - explosion thermonuclear bomb in 1958. (National Nuclear Security Administration/Nevada Site Office)

The Arkansas test was part of Operation Dominic, a series of more than 100 explosions in Nevada and the Pacific Ocean in 1962. (U.S. Department of Defense)

Part of the Fishbowl Bluegill series of high altitude nuclear tests - a 400 kiloton explosion in the atmosphere, 48 km above Pacific Ocean. View from above. October 1962. (U.S. Department of Defense)

Rings around a nuclear mushroom during the Yeso test project in 1962. (U.S. Department of Defense)

Sedan Crater was formed by the detonation of 100 kilotons of explosives 193 meters below the soft desert sediments of Nevada on July 6, 1962. The crater turned out to be 97 meters deep and 390 meters in diameter. (National Nuclear Security Administration/Nevada Site Office)

Photo of the French government's nuclear explosion on Mururoa Atoll in 1971. (AP Photo)

The same nuclear explosion on Mururoa Atoll. (Pierre J. / CC BY NC SA)

The “Surviving City” was built 2,286 meters from the epicenter of a 29-kiloton nuclear explosion. The house remained practically intact. The "survival city" consisted of houses, office buildings, shelters, power sources, communications, radio stations and "living" vans. The test, codenamed Apple II, took place on May 5, 1955. (U.S. Department of Defense)

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The 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 directions of domestic 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 a explosive and toxic substances."

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

The top-secret facility 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 mid-1948, work on the uranium option was stopped 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 does it itself,” “The Motherland gives it to Stalin,” etc. But in the official decree of the USSR Council of Ministers of June 21, 1946, it was encrypted as “Special jet engine” (“S”).

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 work on the nuclear programs of the USA and Great Britain.

Intelligence materials on the American plutonium charge for an atomic bomb made it possible to reduce the time needed to create the first Soviet charge, although many technical solutions the American prototype was not the best. Even on initial stages Soviet specialists could offer best solutions both the charge as a whole and its individual units. Therefore, the first atomic bomb charge 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 reliably and quickly demonstrate that the USSR also possesses atomic weapons, it was decided to use a charge created according to the American design in the first test.

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

RDS-1 was an aircraft atomic bomb weighing 4.7 tons, with a diameter of 1.5 meters and a length of 3.3 meters.

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 fissile material in the bomb.

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

To produce an atomic bomb charge, a plant was built in the city of Chelyabinsk-40 in the Southern Urals under the conditional number 817 (now the Federal State Unitary Enterprise Mayak Production Association). The plant consisted of the first Soviet industrial reactor for producing plutonium, a radiochemical plant for separating plutonium from irradiated a uranium reactor, and a plant for producing products from metallic plutonium.

The reactor at Plant 817 was brought to design capacity in June 1948, and a year later the enterprise received the required amount of plutonium to make 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, approximately 170 kilometers west of Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan. A plain with a diameter of approximately 20 kilometers, surrounded from the south, west and north by low mountains, was allocated for the test site. In the east of this space there were small hills.

Construction of the training ground, called 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 largely 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 to ensure testing, observation and recording 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 recorded light, neutron and gamma fluxes of a nuclear explosion. To study the impact of a nuclear explosion, sections of metro tunnels, fragments of airfield runways were built on the experimental field, samples of aircraft, tanks, artillery rocket launchers, and 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 with a length of 560 kilometers was laid.

On August 5, 1949, the government commission for testing the RDS-1 gave a conclusion on the full readiness of the test site and proposed to carry out detailed testing of the assembly and detonation operations of the product within 15 days. The test was scheduled for the last days of August. Igor Kurchatov was appointed scientific director of the trial.

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

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 warhead.

On August 24, Kurchatov arrived at the training ground. 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 for it were delivered to the workshop near the tower. At about 12 at night, in the assembly workshop on the site in the center of the field, the final assembly of the product began - the insertion of the main unit into it, that is, a charge of plutonium and a neutron fuse. 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 lifted onto the test tower, it was equipped with fuses and connected to the demolition circuit.

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

At 6.35, 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) connecting the RDS-1 product to the automatic control system was turned on.

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

20 minutes after the explosion, two tanks equipped with lead protection were sent to the center of the field to conduct radiation reconnaissance and inspect the center of the field. Reconnaissance determined that all structures in the center of the field had been demolished. At the site of the tower, a crater gaped; the soil in the center of the field melted, and a continuous 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 heat flow, parameters of the shock wave, characteristics of neutron and gamma radiation, determine the level of radioactive contamination of the area in the area of ​​the explosion and along the trail of the explosion cloud, study the impact of the damaging factors of a nuclear explosion on biological objects.

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 by several closed decrees of the Presidium Supreme Council USSR on October 29, 1949, was awarded orders and medals of the USSR large group leading researchers, designers, technologists; many were awarded the title of Stalin Prize laureates, 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 abolished the American monopoly on the possession of atomic weapons, becoming the second nuclear power in the world.

The material was prepared based on information from RIA Novosti and open sources

When did the Second end? World War, The Soviet Union faced two serious problems: destroyed cities, towns, facilities National economy, the restoration of which required enormous efforts, costs, as well as the presence of unprecedented weapons of destructive power in the United States, which had already dropped nuclear weapons on civilian cities in Japan. The first test of an atomic bomb in the USSR changed the balance of power, possibly preventing a new war.

Background

Initial Lag Soviet Union in the atomic race had objective reasons:

• Although the development of nuclear physics in the country, starting in the 20s of the last century, was successful, and in 1940 scientists proposed to begin developing weapons based on atomic energy, even the initial design of a bomb, developed by F.F., was ready. Lange, but the outbreak of war dashed these plans.
• Intelligence about the start of large-scale work in this area in Germany and the United States spurred the country's leadership to respond. In 1942, a secret decree of the State Defense Committee was signed, which gave rise to practical steps to create Soviet atomic weapons.
• The USSR, waging a full-scale war, unlike the USA, which earned more from it in financially what I lost fascist Germany, could not invest huge amounts of money in his atomic project, so necessary for victory.

The turning point was the militarily senseless bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After this, at the end of August 1945, L.P. became the curator of the atomic project. Beria, who did a lot to make the tests of the first atomic bomb in the USSR a reality.

Possessing brilliant organizational skills and enormous powers, he not only created conditions for the fruitful work of Soviet scientists, but also attracted to work those German specialists who were captured at the end of the war and were not given to the Americans, who participated in the creation of the atomic “wunderwaffe”. Technical data about the American “Manhattan Project”, successfully “borrowed” by Soviet intelligence officers, served as a good help.

The first atomic munition RDS-1 was mounted in an aircraft bomb body (length 3.3 m, diameter 1.5 m) weighing 4.7 tons. Such characteristics were due to the size of the bomb bay of the TU-4 heavy bomber of long-range aviation, capable of delivering “gifts” to the military bases of the former ally in Europe.

Product No. 1 used plutonium produced in an industrial reactor, enriched at a chemical plant in secret Chelyabinsk - 40. All work was carried out in as soon as possible- for getting required quantity It took only a year to charge the atomic bomb with plutonium from the summer of 1948, when the reactor was launched. Time was a critical factor, because against the backdrop of the US threatening the USSR, waving, by their own definition, an atomic “club”, there was no time to hesitate.

A testing ground for new weapons was created in a deserted area 170 km from Semipalatinsk. The choice was due to the presence of a plain with a diameter of about 20 km, surrounded on three sides by low mountains. Construction of the nuclear test site was completed in the summer of 1949.

A tower made of metal structures about 40 m high, intended for RDS - 1. Underground shelters were built for personnel and scientists, and to study the impact of the explosion, military equipment was installed on the territory of the test site, buildings and industrial structures of various designs were erected, and recording equipment was installed.

Tests with a power corresponding to the detonation of 22 thousand tons of TNT took place on August 29, 1949 and were successful. A deep crater at the location of the above-ground charge, destroyed by a shock wave, exposure high temperature equipment explosions, demolished or heavily damaged buildings, structures confirmed new weapons.

The consequences of the first trial were significant:

• The Soviet Union received an effective weapon to deter any aggressor and deprived the United States of its nuclear monopoly.
• During the creation of weapons, reactors were built, the scientific base of a new industry was created, and previously unknown technologies were developed.
• Although the military part of the atomic project was the main one at that time, it was not the only one. The peaceful use of nuclear energy, the foundations of which were laid by a team of scientists led by I.V. Kurchatov, contributed to the future creation of nuclear power plants and the synthesis of new elements of the periodic table.

The tests of the atomic bomb in the USSR again showed the whole world that our country is capable of solving problems of any complexity. It should be remembered that thermonuclear charges installed in the warheads of modern missile delivery vehicles and other nuclear weapons, which are a reliable shield for Russia, are the “great-grandchildren” of that first bomb.