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. In addition to the United States, Nazi Germany worked on this. 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 head.

There is an opinion that the work of US scientists was accelerated by the secret developments of German colleagues who ended up in America. In any case, in the summer of 1945, at the Potsdam Conference, the new US President 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, it was created state committee 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:

1. Design Bureau of the Kirov Plant, working on the creation of special equipment.
2. Diffuse plant in the Urals, which was supposed to work on the creation of enriched uranium.
3. 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 completely secret, but the American Pacific Air Force was able to record a sharp increase in radiation levels, which was evidence 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:

1. 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.
2. The presence of atomic weapons in the USSR secured its status as a superpower.
3. 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.
4. 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.

“I am not the simplest person,” the American physicist Isidor Isaac Rabi once remarked. “But compared to Oppenheimer, I am very, very simple.” Robert Oppenheimer was one of the central figures of the 20th century, whose very "complexity" absorbed the country's political and ethical contradictions.

During World War II, the brilliant physicist Ajulius Robert Oppenheimer led the development of American nuclear scientists to create the first atomic bomb in human history. The scientist led a secluded and secluded life, and this gave rise to suspicions of treason.

Atomic weapons are the result of all previous developments in science and technology. Discoveries that are directly related to its occurrence were made at the end of the 19th century. A huge role in revealing the secrets of the atom was played by the studies of A. Becquerel, Pierre Curie and Marie Sklodowska-Curie, E. Rutherford and others.

In early 1939, the French physicist Joliot-Curie concluded that a chain reaction was possible that would lead to an explosion of monstrous destructive power and that uranium could become an energy source, like an ordinary explosive. This conclusion was the impetus for the development of nuclear weapons.

Europe was on the eve of World War II, and the potential possession of such a powerful weapon pushed militaristic circles to create it as soon as possible, but the problem of the availability of a large amount of uranium ore for large-scale research was a brake. The physicists of Germany, England, the USA, Japan worked on the creation of atomic weapons, realizing that it was impossible to work without a sufficient amount of uranium ore, the USA in September 1940 purchased a large number of the required ore under false documents from Belgium, which allowed them to work on the creation of nuclear weapons in full swing.

From 1939 to 1945, more than two billion dollars were spent on the Manhattan Project. A huge uranium refinery was built at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. H.C. Urey and Ernest O. Lawrence (inventor of the cyclotron) proposed a purification method based on the principle of gaseous diffusion followed by magnetic separation of two isotopes. A gas centrifuge separated the light Uranium-235 from the heavier Uranium-238.

On the territory of the United States, in Los Alamos, in the desert expanses of the state of New Mexico, in 1942, an American nuclear center was established. Many scientists worked on the project, but the main one was Robert Oppenheimer. Under his leadership, the best minds of that time were gathered not only from the USA and England, but from almost all of Western Europe. A huge team worked on the creation of nuclear weapons, including 12 laureates Nobel Prize. Work in Los Alamos, where the laboratory was located, did not stop for a minute. In Europe, meanwhile, the Second World War, and Germany carried out mass bombing of the cities of England, which endangered the English atomic project “Tub Alloys”, and England voluntarily transferred its developments and leading scientists of the project to the USA, which allowed the USA to take a leading position in the development of nuclear physics (the creation of nuclear weapons).

"The father of the atomic bomb", he was at the same time an ardent opponent of American nuclear policy. Bearing the title of one of the most outstanding physicists of his time, he studied with pleasure the mysticism of ancient Indian books. Communist, traveler and staunch American patriot, very spiritual man, he was nevertheless willing to betray his friends in order to defend himself against the attacks of the anti-communists. The scientist who devised a plan to cause the most damage to Hiroshima and Nagasaki cursed himself for "innocent blood on his hands."

Writing about this controversial man is not an easy task, but an interesting one, and the 20th century was marked by a number of books about him. However, the rich life of the scientist continues to attract biographers.

Oppenheimer was born in New York in 1903 to wealthy and educated Jewish parents. Oppenheimer was brought up in love for painting, music, in an atmosphere of intellectual curiosity. In 1922, he entered Harvard University and in just three years received an honors degree, his main subject was chemistry. In the next few years, the precocious young man traveled to several countries in Europe, where he worked with physicists who dealt with the problems of investigating atomic phenomena in the light of new theories. Just a year after graduating from university, Oppenheimer published a scientific paper that showed how deeply he understood new methods. Soon he, together with the famous Max Born, developed the most important part of quantum theory, known as the Born-Oppenheimer method. In 1927, his outstanding doctoral dissertation brought him worldwide fame.

In 1928 he worked at the Zurich and Leiden universities. In the same year he returned to the USA. From 1929 to 1947 Oppenheimer taught at the University of California and the California Institute of Technology. From 1939 to 1945 he actively participated in the work on the creation of an atomic bomb as part of the Manhattan Project; heading the specially created Los Alamos laboratory.

In 1929, Oppenheimer, a rising star in science, accepted offers from two of several universities that were vying for the right to invite him. During the spring semester he taught at the vibrant, fledgling Caltech in Pasadena, and during the fall and winter semesters at UC Berkeley, where he became the first lecturer in quantum mechanics. In fact, the erudite scholar had to adjust for some time, gradually reducing the level of discussion to the capabilities of his students. In 1936 he fell in love with Jean Tatlock, a restless and moody young woman whose passionate idealism found expression in communist activities. Like many thoughtful people of the time, Oppenheimer explored the ideas of the left movement as one of the possible alternatives, although he did not join the Communist Party, which his younger brother, sister-in-law and many of his friends did. His interest in politics, as well as his ability to read Sanskrit, was the natural result of a constant pursuit of knowledge. In his own words, he was also deeply disturbed by the explosion of anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany and Spain and invested $1,000 a year from his $15,000 annual salary in projects related to the activities of communist groups. After meeting Kitty Harrison, who became his wife in 1940, Oppenheimer parted ways with Jean Tetlock and moved away from her circle of leftist friends.

In 1939, the United States learned that in preparation for a global war, Nazi Germany had discovered the fission of the atomic nucleus. Oppenheimer and other scientists immediately guessed that the German physicists would try to get a controlled chain reaction that could be the key to creating a weapon far more destructive than any that existed at that time. Enlisting the support of the great scientific genius, Albert Einstein, concerned scientists warned President Franklin D. Roosevelt of the danger in a famous letter. In authorizing funding for projects aimed at creating untested weapons, the president acted in strict secrecy. Ironically, many of the world's leading scientists, forced to flee their homeland, worked together with American scientists in laboratories scattered throughout the country. One part of the university groups explored the possibility of creating a nuclear reactor, others took up the solution of the problem of separating the uranium isotopes necessary for the release of energy in a chain reaction. Oppenheimer, who had previously been occupied with theoretical problems, was offered to organize a wide front of work only at the beginning of 1942.

The US Army's atomic bomb program was codenamed Project Manhattan and was led by Colonel Leslie R. Groves, 46, a professional military man. Groves, who described the scientists working on the atomic bomb as "a costly bunch of lunatics," however, acknowledged that Oppenheimer had a hitherto untapped ability to control his fellow debaters when the heat was on. The physicist proposed that all scientists be united in one laboratory in the quiet provincial town of Los Alamos, New Mexico, in an area that he knew well. By March 1943, the boarding house for boys had been turned into a tightly guarded secret center, of which Oppenheimer became scientific director. By insisting on the free exchange of information between scientists, who were strictly forbidden to leave the center, Oppenheimer created an atmosphere of trust and mutual respect, which contributed to the amazing success in his work. Not sparing himself, he remained the leader of all directions of this complex project, although his personal life suffered greatly from this. But for a mixed group of scientists - among whom there were more than a dozen then or future Nobel laureates and of which a rare person did not possess a pronounced individuality - Oppenheimer was an unusually dedicated leader and subtle diplomat. Most of them would agree that the lion's share of the credit for the project's eventual success belongs to him. By December 30, 1944, Groves, who by that time had become a general, could confidently say that the two billion dollars spent would be ready for action by August 1 of the next year. But when Germany admitted defeat in May 1945, many of the researchers working at Los Alamos began to think about using new weapons. After all, probably, Japan would have capitulated soon without the atomic bombing. Should the United States be the first country in the world to use such a terrible device? Harry S. Truman, who became president after Roosevelt's death, appointed a committee to study possible consequences use of the atomic bomb, which included Oppenheimer. Experts decided to recommend dropping an atomic bomb without warning on a major Japanese military facility. Oppenheimer's consent was also obtained.

All these worries would, of course, be moot if the bomb had not gone off. The test of the world's first atomic bomb was carried out on July 16, 1945, about 80 kilometers from the air base in Alamogordo, New Mexico. The device under test, named "Fat Man" for its convex shape, was attached to a steel tower set up in a desert area. At precisely 5:30 a.m., a remote-controlled detonator set off the bomb. With an echoing roar across a 1.6 kilometer diameter area, a gigantic purple-green-orange fireball shot up into the sky. The earth shook from the explosion, the tower disappeared. A white column of smoke rapidly rose to the sky and began to gradually expand, taking on an awesome mushroom shape at an altitude of about 11 kilometers. The first nuclear explosion startled scientific and military observers near the test site and turned their heads. But Oppenheimer remembered the lines from the Indian epic poem Bhagavad Gita: "I will become Death, the destroyer of worlds." Until the end of his life, satisfaction from scientific success was always mixed with a sense of responsibility for the consequences.

On the morning of August 6, 1945, there was a clear, cloudless sky over Hiroshima. As before, the approach from the east of two American aircraft (one of them was called Enola Gay) at an altitude of 10-13 km did not cause alarm (because every day they appeared in the sky of Hiroshima). One of the planes dived and dropped something, and then both planes turned and flew away. The dropped object on a parachute slowly descended and suddenly exploded at an altitude of 600 m above the ground. It was the "Baby" bomb.

Three days after the "Kid" was blown up in Hiroshima, an exact copy of the first "Fat Man" was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. On August 15, Japan, whose resolve had finally been broken by this new weapon, signed an unconditional surrender. However, the voices of skeptics were already being heard, and Oppenheimer himself predicted two months after Hiroshima that "mankind will curse the names of Los Alamos and Hiroshima."

The whole world was shocked by the explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Tellingly, Oppenheimer managed to combine the excitement of testing a bomb on civilians and the joy that the weapon had finally been tested.

However, on next year he accepted an appointment as chairman of the scientific council of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), thus becoming the government's and military's most influential adviser on nuclear issues. While the West and the Stalin-led Soviet Union were seriously preparing for cold war, each side focused on the arms race. Although many of the scientists who were part of the Manhattan Project did not support the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bcreating a new weapon, former employees Oppenheimer Edward Teller and Ernest Lawrence considered that US national security required the rapid development of a hydrogen bomb. Oppenheimer was horrified. From his point of view, the two nuclear powers were already opposed to each other, like "two scorpions in a jar, each able to kill the other, but only at the risk of his own life." With the spread of new weapons in wars, there would no longer be winners and losers - only victims. And the "father of the atomic bomb" made a public statement that he was against the development of the hydrogen bomb. Always out of place under Oppenheimer and clearly envious of his accomplishments, Teller began to make an effort to head the new project, implying that Oppenheimer should no longer be involved in the work. He told FBI investigators that his rival was keeping scientists from working on the hydrogen bomb with his authority, and revealed the secret that Oppenheimer suffered bouts of severe depression in his youth. When President Truman agreed in 1950 to finance the development of the hydrogen bomb, Teller could celebrate victory.

In 1954, Oppenheimer's enemies launched a campaign to remove him from power, which they succeeded after a month-long search for "black spots" in his personal biography. As a result, a show case was organized in which Oppenheimer was opposed by many influential political and scientific figures. As Albert Einstein later put it: "Oppenheimer's problem was that he loved a woman who didn't love him: the US government."

By allowing Oppenheimer's talent to flourish, America doomed him to death.

Oppenheimer is known not only as the creator of the American atomic bomb. He owns many works on quantum mechanics, relativity theory, elementary particle physics, theoretical astrophysics. In 1927 he developed the theory of the interaction of free electrons with atoms. Together with Born, he created the theory of the structure of diatomic molecules. In 1931, he and P. Ehrenfest formulated a theorem, the application of which to the nitrogen nucleus showed that the proton-electron hypothesis of the structure of nuclei leads to a number of contradictions with the known properties of nitrogen. Investigated the internal conversion of g-rays. In 1937 he developed the cascade theory of cosmic showers, in 1938 he made the first calculation of the model neutron star, in 1939 predicted the existence of "black holes".

Oppenheimer owns a number of popular books, including Science and the Common Understanding (Science and the Common Understanding, 1954), Open Mind (The Open Mind, 1955), Some Reflections on Science and Culture (Some Reflections on Science and Culture, 1960) . Oppenheimer died in Princeton on February 18, 1967.

Work on nuclear projects in the USSR and the USA began simultaneously. In August 1942, a secret "Laboratory No. 2" began to work in one of the buildings in the courtyard of Kazan University. Igor Kurchatov was appointed its leader.

In Soviet times, it was claimed that the USSR solved its atomic problem completely independently, and Kurchatov was considered the "father" of the domestic atomic bomb. Although there were rumors about some secrets stolen from the Americans. And only in the 90s, 50 years later, one of the main actors of that time, Yuli Khariton, spoke about the essential role of intelligence in accelerating the backward Soviet project. And American scientific and technical results were obtained by a visitor to English group Klaus Fuchs.

Information from abroad helped the country's leadership to make a difficult decision - to start work on nuclear weapons during the most difficult war. Exploration allowed our physicists to save time, helped to avoid a "misfire" at the first atomic test which was of great political importance.

In 1939, a chain reaction of fission of uranium-235 nuclei was discovered, accompanied by the release of colossal energy. Shortly thereafter, articles on nuclear physics began to disappear from the pages of scientific journals. This could indicate a real prospect of creating an atomic explosive and weapons based on it.

After the discovery by Soviet physicists of the spontaneous fission of uranium-235 nuclei and the determination of the critical mass for residency on the initiative of the head of the scientific and technological revolution

L. Kvasnikov, a corresponding directive was sent out.

In the FSB of Russia (the former KGB of the USSR), 17 volumes of archival file No. 13676, which documented who and how attracted US citizens to work for Soviet intelligence, lie under the heading "keep forever" under the heading "keep forever". Only a few of the top leadership of the KGB of the USSR had access to the materials of this case, the classification of which was removed only recently. Soviet intelligence received the first information about the work on the creation of the American atomic bomb in the fall of 1941. And already in March 1942, extensive information about the ongoing research in the United States and England fell on the table of I.V. Stalin. According to Yu. B. Khariton, in that dramatic period it was more reliable to use the bomb scheme already tested by the Americans for our first explosion. “Given the interests of the state, any other decision was then unacceptable. The merit of Fuchs and our other assistants abroad is undeniable. However, we implemented the American scheme in the first test not so much from technical as from political considerations.

The announcement that the Soviet Union had mastered the secret of nuclear weapons aroused in the US ruling circles a desire to unleash a preventive war as soon as possible. The Troyan plan was developed, which provided for the start fighting January 1, 1950. At that time, the United States had 840 strategic bombers in combat units, 1350 in reserve and over 300 atomic bombs.

A test site was built near the city of Semipalatinsk. Exactly at 7:00 am on August 29, 1949, the first Soviet nuclear device under the code name "RDS-1" was blown up at this test site.

The Troyan plan, according to which atomic bombs were to be dropped on 70 cities of the USSR, was thwarted due to the threat of a retaliatory strike. The event that took place at the Semipalatinsk test site informed the world about the creation of nuclear weapons in the USSR.

Foreign intelligence not only drew the attention of the country's leadership to the problem of creating atomic weapons in the West and thereby initiated similar work in our country. Thanks to information from foreign intelligence, according to academicians A. Aleksandrov, Yu. Khariton and others, I. Kurchatov did not make big mistakes, we managed to avoid dead ends in the creation of atomic weapons and create more short time an atomic bomb in the USSR, in just three years, while the United States spent four years on it, spending five billion dollars on its creation.

As Academician Yu. Khariton noted in an interview with the Izvestiya newspaper on December 8, 1992, the first Soviet atomic charge was made according to the American model with the help of information received from K. Fuchs. According to the academician, when government awards were presented to participants in the Soviet atomic project, Stalin, satisfied that there was no American monopoly in this area, remarked: “If we were late for one to a year and a half, then we would probably try this charge on ourselves.” ".

It attracted experts from many countries. Scientists and engineers from the USA, the USSR, England, Germany and Japan worked on these developments. Particularly active work was carried out in this area by the Americans, who had the best technological base and raw materials, and also managed to attract the strongest intellectual resources at that time to research.

The United States government has set a task for physicists - to create a new type of weapon in the shortest possible time that could be delivered to the most remote point on the planet.

Los Alamos, located in the deserted desert of New Mexico, became the center of American nuclear research. Many scientists, designers, engineers and the military worked on the top-secret military project, and the experienced theoretical physicist Robert Oppenheimer, who is most often called the "father" of atomic weapons, was in charge of all the work. Under his leadership, the best specialists from all over the world developed the controlled technology without interrupting the search process for even a minute.

By the autumn of 1944, the activities to create the first nuclear plant in history had come to an end in general terms. By this time, a special aviation regiment had already been formed in the United States, which had to carry out the tasks of delivering deadly weapons to the places of their use. The pilots of the regiment underwent special training, making training flights on different heights and in conditions close to combat.

First atomic bombings

In mid-1945, US designers managed to assemble two nuclear devices ready for use. The first objects to strike were also chosen. At that time Japan was the strategic adversary of the USA.

The American leadership decided to deliver the first atomic strikes on two Japanese cities in order to frighten not only Japan, but also other countries, including the USSR, by this action.

On August 6th and 9th, 1945, American bombers dropped the first ever atomic bombs on the unsuspecting inhabitants of Japanese cities, which were Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As a result, more than one hundred thousand people died from thermal radiation and shock waves. Such were the consequences of the use of unprecedented weapons. The world has entered a new phase of its development.

However, the US monopoly on the military use of the atom was not too long. The Soviet Union also searched hard for ways to put into practice the principles underlying nuclear weapons. Igor Kurchatov headed the work of a team of Soviet scientists and inventors. In August 1949, tests of the Soviet atomic bomb were successfully carried out, which received the working name RDS-1. The fragile military balance in the world was restored.

American Robert Oppenheimer and Soviet scientist Igor Kurchatov are officially recognized as the fathers of the atomic bomb. But in parallel, deadly weapons were developed in other countries (Italy, Denmark, Hungary), so the discovery rightfully belongs to everyone.

The first to deal with this issue were the German physicists Fritz Strassmann and Otto Hahn, who in December 1938 for the first time managed to artificially split atomic nucleus uranium. And six months later, at the Kummersdorf test site near Berlin, the first reactor was already being built and urgently purchased uranium ore from the Congo.

"Uranium project" - the Germans start and lose

In September 1939, the Uranium Project was classified. 22 reputable scientific centers were attracted to participate in the program, the research was supervised by the Minister of Armaments Albert Speer. The construction of an isotope separation plant and the production of uranium for extracting an isotope from it that supports a chain reaction was entrusted to the IG Farbenindustry concern.

For two years, a group of the venerable scientist Heisenberg studied the possibilities of creating a reactor with and heavy water. A potential explosive (the isotope uranium-235) could be isolated from uranium ore.

But for this, an inhibitor is needed that slows down the reaction - graphite or heavy water. Choice last version created an insurmountable problem.

The only plant for the production of heavy water, which was located in Norway, after the occupation was put out of action by local resistance fighters, and small stocks of valuable raw materials were taken to France.

The explosion of an experimental nuclear reactor in Leipzig also prevented the rapid implementation of the nuclear program.

Hitler supported the uranium project as long as he hoped to obtain a super-powerful weapon that could influence the outcome of the war he unleashed. After the cuts in public funding, the programs of work continued for some time.

In 1944, Heisenberg managed to create cast uranium plates, and a special bunker was built for the reactor plant in Berlin.

It was planned to complete the experiment to achieve a chain reaction in January 1945, but a month later the equipment was urgently transported to the Swiss border, where it was deployed only a month later. In a nuclear reactor there were 664 cubes of uranium weighing 1525 kg. It was surrounded by a graphite neutron reflector weighing 10 tons, an additional one and a half tons of heavy water was loaded into the core.

On March 23, the reactor finally started working, but the report to Berlin was premature: the reactor did not reach a critical point, and a chain reaction did not occur. Additional calculations have shown that the mass of uranium must be increased by at least 750 kg, proportionally adding the amount of heavy water.

But the reserves of strategic raw materials were at the limit, as was the fate of the Third Reich. On April 23, the Americans entered the village of Haigerloch, where the tests were carried out. The military dismantled the reactor and transported it to the United States.

The first atomic bombs in the USA

A little later, the Germans took up the development of the atomic bomb in the United States and Great Britain. It all started with a letter from Albert Einstein and his co-authors, immigrant physicists, sent by them in September 1939 to US President Franklin Roosevelt.

The appeal stressed that Nazi Germany was close to building an atomic bomb.

Stalin first learned about the work on nuclear weapons (both allies and opponents) from intelligence officers in 1943. They immediately decided to create a similar project in the USSR. The instructions were issued not only to scientists, but also to intelligence, for which the extraction of any information about nuclear secrets has become a super task.

The invaluable information about the developments of American scientists, which Soviet intelligence officers managed to obtain, significantly advanced the domestic nuclear project. It helped our scientists avoid inefficient search paths and significantly speed up the implementation of the final goal.

Serov Ivan Aleksandrovich - head of the operation to create a bomb

Of course, the Soviet government could not ignore the successes of German nuclear physicists. After the war, a group of Soviet physicists was sent to Germany - future academicians in the form of colonels of the Soviet army.

Ivan Serov, the first deputy commissar of internal affairs, was appointed head of the operation, which allowed scientists to open any doors.

In addition to their German colleagues, they found reserves of uranium metal. This, according to Kurchatov, reduced the development time Soviet bomb for at least a year. More than one ton of uranium and leading nuclear specialists were also taken out of Germany by the American military.

Not only chemists and physicists were sent to the USSR, but also skilled labor - mechanics, electricians, glass blowers. Some employees were found in POW camps. In total, about 1,000 German specialists worked on the Soviet nuclear project.

German scientists and laboratories on the territory of the USSR in the postwar years

A uranium centrifuge and other equipment were transported from Berlin, as well as documents and reagents from the von Ardenne laboratory and the Kaiser Institute of Physics. As part of the program, laboratories "A", "B", "C", "D" were created, which were headed by German scientists.

The head of laboratory "A" was Baron Manfred von Ardenne, who developed a method for gaseous diffusion purification and separation of uranium isotopes in a centrifuge.

For the creation of such a centrifuge (only on an industrial scale) in 1947, he received the Stalin Prize. At that time, the laboratory was located in Moscow, on the site of the famous Kurchatov Institute. The team of each German scientist included 5-6 Soviet specialists.

Later, laboratory "A" was taken to Sukhumi, where a physico-technical institute was created on its basis. In 1953, Baron von Ardenne became a Stalin laureate for the second time.

Laboratory "B", which conducted experiments in the field of radiation chemistry in the Urals, was headed by Nikolaus Riehl - a key figure in the project. There, in Snezhinsk, the talented Russian geneticist Timofeev-Resovsky worked with him, with whom they were friends back in Germany. The successful test of the atomic bomb brought Riel the star of the Hero of Socialist Labor and the Stalin Prize.

The research of laboratory "B" in Obninsk was led by Professor Rudolf Pose, a pioneer in the field of nuclear testing. His team managed to create fast neutron reactors, the first nuclear power plant in the USSR, and designs for reactors for submarines.

On the basis of the laboratory, the A.I. Leipunsky. Until 1957, the professor worked in Sukhumi, then in Dubna, at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Technologies.

Laboratory "G", located in the Sukhumi sanatorium "Agudzery", was headed by Gustav Hertz. The nephew of the famous 19th-century scientist gained fame after a series of experiments that confirmed the ideas of quantum mechanics and the theory of Niels Bohr.

The results of it productive work in Sukhumi, they were used to create an industrial installation in Novouralsk, where in 1949 they made the stuffing of the first Soviet bomb RDS-1.

The uranium bomb that the Americans dropped on Hiroshima was a cannon-type bomb. When creating the RDS-1, domestic nuclear physicists were guided by the Fat Boy, the “Nagasaki bomb”, made from plutonium according to the implosive principle.

In 1951, Hertz was awarded the Stalin Prize for his fruitful work.

German engineers and scientists lived in comfortable houses, they brought their families, furniture, paintings from Germany, they were provided with a decent salary and special food. Did they have the status of prisoners? According to academician A.P. Alexandrov, an active participant in the project, they were all prisoners in such conditions.

Having received permission to return to their homeland, the German specialists signed a non-disclosure agreement about their participation in the Soviet atomic project for 25 years. In the GDR, they continued to work in their specialty. Baron von Ardenne was twice a laureate of the German National Prize.

The professor headed the Physics Institute in Dresden, which was created under the auspices of the Scientific Council for the Peaceful Applications of Atomic Energy. The Scientific Council was headed by Gustav Hertz, who received the National Prize of the GDR for his three-volume textbook on atomic physics. Here, in Dresden, at the Technical University, Professor Rudolf Pose also worked.

The participation of German specialists in the Soviet atomic project, as well as the achievements of Soviet intelligence, do not diminish the merits of Soviet scientists, who, with their heroic labor, created domestic atomic weapons. And yet, without the contribution of each participant in the project, the creation of the atomic industry and the nuclear bomb would have dragged on for indefinite

Nuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction of explosive action, based on the use of the energy of fission of heavy nuclei of some isotopes of uranium and plutonium, or in thermonuclear reactions of fusion of light nuclei of hydrogen isotopes of deuterium and tritium into heavier nuclei, for example, nuclei of helium isotopes.

Warheads of missiles and torpedoes, aviation and depth charges, artillery shells and mines can be equipped with nuclear charges. In terms of power, nuclear weapons are distinguished as ultra-small (less than 1 kt), small (1-10 kt), medium (10-100 kt), large (100-1000 kt) and extra-large (more than 1000 kt). Depending on the tasks to be solved, it is possible to use nuclear weapons in the form of underground, ground, air, underwater and surface explosions. Features of the damaging effect of nuclear weapons on the population are determined not only by the power of the ammunition and the type of explosion, but also by the type of nuclear device. Depending on the charge, they distinguish: atomic weapons, which are based on the fission reaction; thermonuclear weapons - when using a fusion reaction; combined charges; neutron weapons.

The only fissile material found in nature in appreciable quantities is an isotope of uranium with a nucleus mass of 235 atomic mass units (uranium-235). The content of this isotope in natural uranium is only 0.7%. The rest is uranium-238. Since the chemical properties of the isotopes are exactly the same, separating uranium-235 from natural uranium requires a rather complicated isotope separation process. The result can be highly enriched uranium, containing about 94% uranium-235, which is suitable for use in nuclear weapons.

Fissile substances can be obtained artificially, and the least difficult from a practical point of view is the production of plutonium-239, which is formed as a result of the capture of a neutron by a uranium-238 nucleus (and the subsequent chain of radioactive decays of intermediate nuclei). A similar process can be carried out in a nuclear reactor running on natural or low enriched uranium. In the future, plutonium can be separated from the spent fuel of the reactor in the process of chemical processing of fuel, which is much simpler than the isotope separation process carried out in the production of weapons-grade uranium.

Other fissile substances can also be used to create nuclear explosive devices, for example, uranium-233 obtained by irradiating thorium-232 in a nuclear reactor. However, only uranium-235 and plutonium-239 have found practical application, primarily because of the relative ease of obtaining these materials.

The possibility of practical use of the energy released during nuclear fission is due to the fact that the fission reaction can have a chain, self-sustaining character. In each fission event, approximately two secondary neutrons are produced, which, being captured by the nuclei of the fissile material, can cause their fission, which in turn leads to the formation of even more neutrons. When special conditions are created, the number of neutrons, and hence the number of fission events, grows from generation to generation.

The explosion of the first nuclear explosive device was carried out by the United States on July 16, 1945 in Alamogordo, New Mexico. The device was a plutonium bomb that used a directed explosion to create criticality. The power of the explosion was about 20 kt. In the USSR, the explosion of the first nuclear explosive device, similar to the American one, was carried out on August 29, 1949.

The history of the creation of nuclear weapons.

In early 1939, the French physicist Frederic Joliot-Curie concluded that a chain reaction was possible that would lead to an explosion of monstrous destructive power and that uranium could become an energy source like a conventional explosive. This conclusion was the impetus for the development of nuclear weapons. Europe was on the eve of the Second World War, and the potential possession of such a powerful weapon gave any owner of it a huge advantage. The physicists of Germany, England, the USA, and Japan worked on the creation of atomic weapons.

By the summer of 1945, the Americans managed to assemble two atomic bombs, called "Kid" and "Fat Man". The first bomb weighed 2722 kg and was loaded with enriched Uranium-235.

The Fat Man bomb with a charge of Plutonium-239 with a power of more than 20 kt had a mass of 3175 kg.

US President G. Truman became the first political leader who decided to use nuclear bombs. Japanese cities (Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Kokura, Niigata) were chosen as the first targets for nuclear strikes. From a military point of view, there was no need for such bombardments of densely populated Japanese cities.

On the morning of August 6, 1945, there was a clear, cloudless sky over Hiroshima. As before, the approach from the east of two American aircraft (one of them was called Enola Gay) at an altitude of 10-13 km did not cause alarm (because every day they appeared in the sky of Hiroshima). One of the planes dived and dropped something, and then both planes turned and flew away. The dropped object on a parachute slowly descended and suddenly exploded at an altitude of 600 m above the ground. It was the "Baby" bomb. On August 9, another bomb was dropped over the city of Nagasaki.

The total loss of life and the scale of destruction from these bombings are characterized by the following figures: 300 thousand people died instantly from thermal radiation (temperature about 5000 degrees C) and a shock wave, another 200 thousand were injured, burns, and radiation sickness. On an area of ​​12 sq. km, all buildings were completely destroyed. In Hiroshima alone, out of 90,000 buildings, 62,000 were destroyed.

After the American atomic bombings, by order of Stalin, on August 20, 1945, a special committee on atomic energy was formed under the leadership of L. Beria. The committee included prominent scientists A.F. Ioffe, P.L. Kapitsa and I.V. Kurchatov. A conscientious communist, scientist Klaus Fuchs, a prominent worker at the American nuclear center at Los Alamos, rendered a great service to the Soviet atomic scientists. During 1945-1947, he transmitted information four times on the practical and theoretical issues of creating atomic and hydrogen bombs, which accelerated their appearance in the USSR.

In 1946-1948, the nuclear industry was created in the USSR. A test site was built near the city of Semipalatinsk. In August 1949, the first Soviet nuclear device was blown up there. Before that, US President G. Truman was informed that the Soviet Union had mastered the secret of nuclear weapons, but the Soviet Union would create a nuclear bomb no earlier than 1953. This message aroused in the US ruling circles a desire to unleash a preventive war as soon as possible. The Troyan plan was developed, which provided for the start of hostilities in early 1950. At that time, the United States had 840 strategic bombers and over 300 atomic bombs.

The damaging factors of a nuclear explosion are: shock wave, light radiation, penetrating radiation, radioactive contamination and electromagnetic pulse.

shock wave. The main damaging factor of a nuclear explosion. It consumes about 60% of the energy of a nuclear explosion. It is an area of ​​sharp air compression, spreading in all directions from the explosion site. The damaging effect of the shock wave is characterized by the amount of excess pressure. Overpressure is the difference between the maximum pressure at the front of the shock wave and the normal atmospheric pressure in front of it. It is measured in kilo pascals - 1 kPa \u003d 0.01 kgf / cm2.

With an excess pressure of 20-40 kPa, unprotected people can get light injuries. The impact of a shock wave with an excess pressure of 40-60 kPa leads to lesions of moderate severity. Severe injuries occur at an excess pressure of more than 60 kPa and are characterized by severe contusions of the whole body, fractures of the limbs, ruptures of internal parenchymal organs. Extremely severe lesions, often fatal, are observed at excess pressure over 100 kPa.

light emission is a stream of radiant energy, including visible ultraviolet and infrared rays.

Its source is a luminous area formed by the hot products of the explosion. Light radiation propagates almost instantly and lasts, depending on the power of the nuclear explosion, up to 20 s. Its strength is such that, despite its short duration, it can cause fires, deep burns of the skin and damage to the organs of vision in people.

Light radiation does not penetrate opaque materials, so any obstruction that can create a shadow protects against the direct action of light radiation and eliminates burns.

Significantly attenuated light radiation in dusty (smoky) air, in fog, rain.

penetrating radiation.

This is a stream of gamma radiation and neutrons. The impact lasts 10-15 s. The primary effect of radiation is realized in physical, physicochemical and chemical processes with the formation of chemically active free radicals (H, OH, HO2) with high oxidizing and reducing properties. Subsequently, various peroxide compounds are formed that inhibit the activity of some enzymes and increase the activity of others, which play an important role in the processes of autolysis (self-dissolution) of body tissues. The appearance in the blood of decay products of radiosensitive tissues and pathological metabolism when exposed to high doses of ionizing radiation is the basis for the formation of toxemia - poisoning of the body associated with the circulation of toxins in the blood. Violations of the physiological regeneration of cells and tissues, as well as changes in the functions of regulatory systems, are of primary importance in the development of radiation injuries.

Radioactive contamination of the area

Its main sources are fission products of a nuclear charge and radioactive isotopes, formed as a result of the acquisition of radioactive properties by the elements from which a nuclear weapon is made and which are part of the soil. They form a radioactive cloud. It rises to a height of many kilometers, and is transported with air masses over considerable distances. Radioactive particles, falling from the cloud to the ground, form a zone of radioactive contamination (trace), the length of which can reach several hundred kilometers. Radioactive substances pose the greatest danger in the first hours after falling out, since their activity is highest during this period.

electromagnetic pulse .

This is a short-term electromagnetic field that occurs during the explosion of a nuclear weapon as a result of the interaction of gamma radiation and neutrons emitted during a nuclear explosion with the atoms of the environment. The consequence of its impact is the burnout or breakdowns of individual elements of radio-electronic and electrical equipment. The defeat of people is possible only in those cases when they come into contact with wire lines at the time of the explosion.

A type of nuclear weapon is neutron and thermonuclear weapons.

A neutron weapon is a small-sized thermonuclear munition with a power of up to 10 kt, designed mainly to destroy enemy manpower due to the action of neutron radiation. Neutron weapons are classified as tactical nuclear weapons.