Residents of modern Russia know that Bulgaria is a South Slavic country with a mild climate, where in any cafe and restaurant they understand Russian. Those born in the USSR will say that "the Bulgarian elephant was the best friend of the Soviet elephant." And only very few veterans of the Soviet special services remember how great little Bulgaria helped the great and mighty Soviet Union in the struggle for survival in the middle of the 20th century. At a reception in honor of the successful test of the Soviet atomic bomb on August 29, 1949, Joseph Stalin said: "If we were one to one and a half years late with the atomic bomb, we would probably" try "it on ourselves."
In April 1945, Adolf Hitler was still alive, and Berlin fiercely resisted. The army of the Third Reich, even in its dying convulsions, took the lives of thousands of Soviet, British and American soldiers every day. And Winston Churchill has already instructed the Joint Planning Staff of the British War Cabinet to develop a plan for the war of Great Britain and the United States against the USSR, with the participation of captured German soldiers. On May 22, 1945, less than two weeks after Victory Day, a plan for an attack by Great Britain and the United States on the USSR was ready, it was called Operation Unthinkable. On July 24, 1945, US President Harry Truman had already threatened Stalin at a conference of the "allies" in Potsdam: "We have a new weapon of extraordinary destructive power." On August 6 and 9, 1945, the Americans dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Neither in the 20th nor in the 21st century mankind has managed to create a more formidable weapon.
In March 1940, Great Britain put forward an ultimatum to Stalin: either you stop your troops in Finland, or we bomb Baku! You are left without oil and at war with us British. In 1940, there were no other strategic sources of oil in the USSR. One can easily imagine what would have happened to the fields that had not been modernized since 1912 if British bombs had fallen on them. The RAF threatened the USSR with Wellington bombers stationed at their base in Masoula, Iraq. After the end of World War II, Stalin was in no hurry to withdraw Soviet troops from Iran. On the one hand, he did not want to lose oil reserves in northern Iran. On the other hand, the Soviet troops were a reliable counterbalance to the British bombers in neighboring Iraq.
In 1946, the "allies" staged the "Iranian crisis" for the USSR. Harry Truman threatened Stalin to drop a "superbomb" on Moscow if the USSR does not withdraw its troops from Iran. Stalin again had to yield to the demands of the obviously superior enemy. There was no end to the insolence of the Americans. In the same 1946, they deployed B-29 bombers capable of carrying nuclear weapons along the border with Yugoslavia. The reason for this was: the proud Serbs dared to shoot down an American military aircraft that invaded their airspace.
The Soviet Union lagged noticeably behind in the development of nuclear weapons, and had nowhere to get uranium in industrial quantities. If the gap persisted further, the first socialist state in the world might not have survived. To create the first Soviet reactors, uranium was needed, a lot of uranium. Where did the USSR get the raw materials so necessary for the survival of the state?
In 1943, by decree of the Council of People's Commissars (SNK), a department of radioactive elements was organized under the Committee for Geology. The USSR already had theoretical groundwork, but the raw material base was negligible. December 22, 1943 the head of laboratory No. 2 of the USSR Academy of Sciences I. V. Kurchatov sent a note to MG Pervukhin, Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR: "The bottleneck in solving the problem is still the question of the reserves of uranium raw materials." On April 8, 1944, on the direct instructions of the State Defense Committee (GKO), an extensive search for uranium began throughout the USSR. The results of the first years of operation were dismal. Academician AP Aleksandrov recalled: "The first portions of our uranium ore were transported on mules directly in sacks!" The Minister of Geology of the USSR P. Antropov says: “Uranium ore for processing along the mountain paths of the Pamirs was carried in sacks on donkeys and camels. There were no roads or proper equipment at that time. " Any small deposits were worked out; in their exploration ardor, the uranium workers almost ruined the resort areas of the North Caucasus: here mining was carried out on poor ore occurrences in the Beshtau and Byk mountains, where they literally picked uranium minerals from small veins with their hands. Large deposits of uranium in the USSR were found only in the 1950s. Unexpectedly for the then specialists, it turned out to be a widespread metal that forms large deposits. The first large reserves of uranium ore were found in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan. Central Asia turned out to be the richest uranium-bearing province. But in the 1940s, no one knew about it.
In November 1944, a large Soviet delegation led by the head of the 4th special department of the NKVD V. Kravchenko left for Bulgaria, which had just been liberated from the Nazis. Experts from the USSR studied the results of geological exploration of a uranium deposit near the village of Goten in the Sofia region. Two months later, the State Defense Committee sent decree No. 7408 of January 27, 1945, signed by Stalin, to only two people in the country - the People's Commissar (Minister) of Foreign Affairs V. M. Molotov and People's Commissar for State Security L. P. Beria:
“Top secret, of special importance.
1. To organize prospecting, exploration and production of uranium ores in Bulgaria at the Goten uranium deposit and in its area, as well as geological exploration of other known or potentially discovered deposits of uranium ores and minerals.
2. Instruct the NKID of the USSR (Comrade Molotov) to negotiate with the Government of Bulgaria on the creation of a mixed Bulgarian-Soviet joint-stock company with a predominance of Soviet capital for the exploration, exploration and production of uranium ores at the Goten uranium deposit and in its area, as well as for the production of geological exploration other known or likely to be discovered in Bulgaria deposits of uranium ores and minerals.
Negotiations with the Bulgarian authorities and all the documentation on the establishment and registration of a joint stock company should be carried out, calling the deposit "radium".
On September 27, 1945, the State Security Commissioner of the 3rd rank Pavel Sudoplatov headed the newly formed department "C" under the NKVD of the USSR. He was engaged in the production and generalization of data on the creation of nuclear weapons. In his memoirs “Special Operations. Lubyanka and the Kremlin 1930-1950 "Sudoplatov wrote:" Uranium ore from Bukhovo (Bulgaria) was used by us during the launch of the first nuclear reactor. In the Sudeten Mountains in Czechoslovakia, uranium ore was found to be of lower quality, but we also used it. Due to its higher quality, the supplies of Bulgarian uranium were given special attention. Dimitrov (the Bulgarian communist and head of the Comintern Georgy D. - Author's note) personally followed the uranium developments. We sent more than three hundred mining engineers to Bulgaria, urgently recalling them from the army: the Bukhovo area was guarded by the internal troops of the NKVD. About one and a half tons of uranium ore a week came from Bukhovo. " The mining, processing and delivery of uranium ore from Bulgaria to the USSR was led by Igor Aleksandrovich Shchors, a mining engineer, a second cousin of the hero of the Civil War Nikolai Aleksandrovich Shchors, and a dashing intelligence officer. On June 21, 1941, he graduated from the NKVD special school, and in 1944 he took part in the Monastyr and Berezino operations. Already from his biography, one can understand how important Bulgarian uranium was for the USSR. Not to mention the 300 mining engineers who were urgently recalled from the Red Army that fought in Western Europe.
November 9, 1945 Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR L. P. Beria signed a decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR N 2853-82ss "On measures to organize the Soviet-Bulgarian mining society." On August 15, 1946, Stalin was presented with the "Report on the status of work on the use of atomic energy for 1945 and 7 months of 1946". It reads: “Abroad, the First Main Directorate (NKVD) is working in Bulgaria at the Gotenskoye deposit, in Czechoslovakia at the Jachymov mines and in Saxony at the Johanngeorgenshtadt mines. In 1946, overseas ore enterprises were given the task to extract 35 tons of uranium in ore. Operational work at these mines began in April-May 1946, for 3 months as of June 20, 1946, 9.9 tons of uranium in ore were mined, including 5, 3 tons in Czechoslovakia, 4, 3 tons in Bulgaria and Saxony - 300 kilograms. " On December 25, 1946, the USSR launched the first nuclear reactor in Europe - "F-1". On June 18, 1948, the first Soviet nuclear reactor producing weapons-grade plutonium - "A-1", "Annushka", was put into operation. The first Soviet reactors used metallic uranium with a natural 235U isotope content of about 0.7%.
On June 20, 1956, the Soviet-Bulgarian Mining Society was closed. In its place, the "Rare Metals" administration was established, which was directly subordinate to the Council of Ministers of the People's Republic of Bulgaria. Until the 1970s, uranium in Bulgaria was mined using the classical mining method. Then the method of borehole in situ leaching was introduced, by injecting a solvent into the uranium-bearing layers of the earth. A solution of various uranium salts was pumped out to the surface and the metal was extracted chemically under factory conditions. Bulgarian uranium enrichment plants were built in 1958-1975. in Bukhovo (PKhK Metallurg) and Eleshnitsa (Zvezda plant). They gave out metal with a purity of up to 80%, in the form of oxide-nitrous oxide - U (3) O (8). In total, from 1946 to 1990. 16,255,48 tons of uranium ore were mined in the country. The Soviet Union received almost all of the uranium mined from Bulgaria. The only exceptions were the last batches of metal processed but not sent to the USSR on time in 1990. But this is a mere trifle. Especially compared to the transfer of Russian weapons-grade uranium to the United States.
Uranium ore mining in Bulgaria by years, tons. Blue color - extraction by the classic mine method. Yellow color - extraction by "geotechnical" method of underground leaching.
Write-off to the Balgarskoto geological company, year. 75, book. 1-3, 2014, p. 131-137
If we multiply the extracted quantities of ore by the average uranium content in it (see table 1 below), it turns out that over 45 years Bulgaria supplied the USSR with about 130 tons of "pure" metal. In 1974, the USSR built the first nuclear power plant in the Balkans, Kozloduy, for the Bulgarians. It operated four power units on VVER-440 reactors and two power units on VVER-1000. VVER-440 reactors loaded 42 tons of uranium with a purity of 3.5%, and VVER-1000 - 66 tons of 3, 3-4, 4%. This amounts to about 12 tons of "pure" metal for the initial loading of all six reactors, excluding reloading as nuclear fuel depletes.
Since 2003, the European Union has begun to put pressure on Bulgaria: the country must close its nuclear power plant and turn from an electricity supplier into a consumer. Bulgaria's accession to NATO in 2004 was accompanied by the "ritual slaughter" of power units 1 and 2 of the Kozloduy NPP. On the occasion of the country's accession to the European Union in 2007, to the joy of the West, the 3rd and 4th blocs were “slaughtered”. The last and most powerful two reactors were also “sentenced to death”: the 5th - by 2017 and the 6th - by 2019. Now it seems that it has passed. There is a project to modernize the 5th and 6th units of the Kozloduy NPP, implemented by the French-Russian consortium EDF - Rosenergoatom - Rusatom Service. Alas, there is no way without European partners.
By generously paying for corrupt "democratic" politicians who betrayed their country and people, the West managed to sabotage the construction of the second Bulgarian nuclear power plant "Belene". But the patience of the Bulgarian people is not unlimited. The country smelled not just of protests and riots, but of civil insubordination and revolution. The government backed away, and on January 27, 2013.the first and so far the only referendum in 25 years, the so-called. democracy in the country. Bulgarians answered the question: should the nuclear power industry in Bulgaria develop through the construction of a new nuclear power plant? 851,757 people, or 61, 49% of those who attended the referendum, answered “yes”. Democrats could not return already received bribes. Citing the fact that fewer people voted in the referendum than in the previous parliamentary elections, the deputies decided that they would build new 7th and 8th units at the Kozloduy NPP. This is not the most optimal solution, but with two existing blocks and two more new ones, the country will somehow survive the next 50 years. The Bulgarian people very much hope that during this time the European Union and its democracy in the modern perverted sense will die, and Bulgaria will again return to a single Slavic and Orthodox world, where its natural place is.
