The Russian nuclear industry celebrates 70 years. It dates back to its official history from the Decree of the State Defense Committee No. 9887ss / op "On the Special Committee under the GKOK" dated August 20, 1945, but Russia came to the approaches to the atomic problem much earlier - even if we bear in mind its weapons-grade aspect.
The Soviet leadership knew about atomic work in England and the United States at least from the fall of 1941, and on September 28, 1942, the first GKO decree No. 2352ss "On the organization of work on uranium" was adopted.
THE FIRST STEPS
On February 11, 1943, the GKO decree No. GOKO-2872ss appeared, where the deputy chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the People's Commissar of the Chemical Industry Mikhail Pervukhin and the chairman of the Committee for Higher Education under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR Sergei Kaftanov were instructed to “daily supervise work on uranium and provide systematic assistance to the special laboratory of the atomic nucleus of the Academy Sciences of the USSR ". Scientific guidance was entrusted to Professor Igor Kurchatov, who was supposed to "by July 1, 1943, carry out the necessary research and submit to the State Defense Committee by July 5, 1943 a report on the possibility of creating a uranium bomb or uranium fuel …".
Vyacheslav Molotov was appointed the curator of atomic work from the Politburo, but this was not for the future atomic project, and on May 19, 1944, Pervukhin sent a letter to Stalin, where he proposed “to create a Uranium Council at the GOKO for day-to-day control and assistance in carrying out work on uranium, approximately in this composition: 1) t. Beria L. P. (Chairman of the Council), 2) T. Molotov V. M., 3) T. Pervukhin M. G. (Deputy Chairman), 4) Academician Kurchatov IV.
Pervukhin decided to take the right step: formally, without going against Molotov, to propose to Stalin the curator of the atomic problem the one who could become for her a true "engine" - Beria. Stalin rarely rejected reasonable proposals, especially since Pervukhin did not stop there, and together with Igor Kurchatov, on July 10, 1944, he sent Beria, as Deputy Chairman of the GKO, a note on the development of work on the uranium problem in the USSR, to which was attached a draft GKO Resolution, where the latter the point looked like this: “To organize under the State Defense Committee a Council on uranium for day-to-day control and assistance in carrying out work on the uranium problem, composed of: comrade. Beria L. P. (chairman), comrade Pervukhin M. G. (deputy chairman), comrade IV Kurchatov ". Molotov, as we see, was already directly deduced from the parentheses.
The first order of the USSR State Defense Committee on the organization of work on uranium was adopted in 1942.
On September 29, 1944, Kurchatov wrote a letter to Beria, ending with the words: “… knowing your extremely busy schedule, nevertheless, in view of the historical significance of the uranium problem, I decided to bother you and ask you to give instructions on such an organization of work that would correspond to the possibilities and the significance of our Great State in world culture”.
And on December 3, 1944, the GKOK decree No. 7069ss was adopted "On urgent measures to ensure the deployment of work carried out by Laboratory No. 2 of the USSR Academy of Sciences." The last, tenth paragraph of the resolution read: “To impose on Comrade LP Beria. monitoring the development of work on uranium”.
However, even then atomic work was not deployed in full force - it was necessary to end the war, and the possibility of creating weapons based on a chain reaction of fission remained a problematic issue, backed up only by calculations.
Gradually, everything cleared up - on July 10, 1945, the People's Commissar of State Security Merkulov sent Beria message No. 4305 / m about the preparation of an atomic bomb test in the United States, indicating the alleged "explosion force" equivalent to five thousand tons of TNT."
The real energy release of the explosion in Alamogordo, produced on July 16, 1945, was 15-20 thousand tons of TNT equivalent, but these were details. It was important that intelligence warned Beria in time, and Beria warned Stalin, who was going to the Potsdam conference, the beginning of which was scheduled for July 17, 1945. That is why Stalin so calmly met the joint provocation of Truman and Churchill when the American president informed Stalin about the successful test bombs, and the British Prime Minister watched the reaction of the Soviet leader.
Finally, the urgent need to speed up the Soviet work on "uranium" became clear after the tragedy of Hiroshima, because on August 6, 1945, the main secret of the atomic bomb was publicly revealed - that it is possible.
The Soviet reaction to this event was the establishment of a Special Committee with extraordinary powers to solve any problems of the "Uranium Project", headed by Lavrentiy Beria. The First Main Directorate (PGU) under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, subordinate to the Special Committee, was organized for "direct management of research, design, design organizations and industrial enterprises for the use of intra-atomic energy of uranium and for the production of atomic bombs". Boris Vannikov became the head of the PSU.
WISHING TO TELL ABOUT WHAT WE HAVE IS OPEN
Today all this is fairly well known - at least to historians of the Soviet Atomic Project. However, it is much less known that in 1952-1953. at the direction and under the editorship of Beria, the secretariat of the Special Committee under the Council of Ministers of the USSR, with the participation of specialists from the nuclear industry, prepared a draft version of the "Collection on the history of mastering atomic energy in the USSR". The collection was supposed to openly talk about Soviet atomic work in almost real time. The idea was fruitful, with great potential, but in the end this most interesting document of the era never saw the light of day. It was first presented in 2005 in the fifth book of the second volume of the collection “The Atomic Project of the USSR. Documents and materials”, but did not come out as a separate publication.
In the USA, in 1945, the book was published by G. D. Smith's Nuclear Energy for Military Purposes. The official report on the development of the atomic bomb under the supervision of the US government - a detailed history of the Manhattan Project. In 1946 the book was translated and published in the USSR. Beria, on the other hand, prepared for the open press a Russian analogue of Smith's report, which had the following content:
Introduction
1. Brief information on atomic energy.
2. The success of Soviet science is not accidental.
3. The atomic bomb is the new weapon of the American imperialists.
4. Difficulties in solving the atomic problem in a short time.
5. "Forecasts" of American, British and other public figures and scientists about the possibility of the USSR to solve the atomic problem.
6. Organization of work to solve the problem of mastering atomic energy and the secret of atomic weapons.
7. Solving the main tasks.
8. Creation of a material base for further development of work in nuclear physics.
9. Test of the first atomic bomb - a triumph of Soviet science and technology.
10. Successful test of the atomic bomb - the collapse of the "forecasts" of the American-British warmongers.
11. Development of work on the use of atomic energy for the needs of the national economy.
Conclusion.
Lavrenty Beria.
The open Soviet analogue of the American government report on the development of the atomic bomb in the United States had its own distinctive structure. Moreover, the book was built so logically that it can be taken as a basis even for modern work on this topic.
The book emphasized with legitimate pride that already before the war in the USSR, a national physics school had been created, the origins of which go back to the work of old Russian scientists. The section "The success of Soviet science is not accidental" says:
“In 1922, Vernadsky predicted:“… We are approaching a great upheaval in the life of mankind, with which everything he had experienced before can not be compared. The time is not far off when a person will get his hands on atomic energy, a source of strength that will give him the opportunity to build his life as he wants.
This may happen in the coming years, it may happen in a century. But it is clear what it should be. Will a person be able to use this force, direct it towards good, and not towards self-destruction? Has he grown to the ability to use the power that science must inevitably give him?
Scientists should not close their eyes to the possible consequences of their scientific work, scientific progress. They must feel responsible for the consequences of their discoveries. They must connect their work with the best organization of all mankind."
In fact, the collection "History of the mastery of atomic energy in the USSR" was supposed to become a report of the government of the USSR to the peoples of the USSR - the time came when people had to find out that they were malnourished and even starved, wore quilted jackets, lived closely after the war, not least because of the fact that huge funds were spent on ensuring a peaceful future for the country.
The Soviet people also had to find out what a majestic feat and in what short time frame they accomplished, having created not only an atomic bomb, but also a powerful new branch of the economy - the atomic one.
To characterize the Russian-Soviet civilization, it is significant that the above ideas were expressed by Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky 33 years before the Russell-Einstein manifesto, which called on the world's scientists to "remember their responsibilities to humanity."
But it is significant for the characterization of Russian-Soviet civilization that it was these thoughts of Vernadsky that were included in the official government collection. That is, unlike the leaders of the West, the leaders of the USSR were imbued with their natural desire for peace, their natural sense of responsibility for a peaceful, free and developed future of the world. No wonder it was in the USSR during Stalin's time that the great slogan was born: "Peace to the world!"
SOVIET BOMB - WEAPON OF THE WORLD
The introduction to the collection, dated June 15, 1953, said:
“After the first examples of atomic bombs were manufactured and tested by the United States of America in 1945, the aggressive leaders of the United States dreamed of conquering world domination with the help of new weapons.
The ashes of the Second World War, in which the peoples of Europe and Asia were involved by the inglorious adventurer Hitler, nourished by Anglo-American capital, had not yet cooled down, as the United States began extensive preparations for a new adventure - an atomic war. Impressed by the barbaric explosions of atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, aggressive US leaders raised a boom about America's chosen role on the globe, about the unsurpassed power of American science and technology, about the inability of any country to solve the atomic problem.
… Monopoly possession of the atomic bomb gave the American imperialists a reason to claim world domination, allowed negotiations on a number of post-war problems, as US Secretary of War Henry Stimson put it, “demonstratively shaking” the atomic bomb. The rulers of the United States - Truman and Co. - with the help of atomic blackmail, began to form military blocs against the USSR and the countries of people's democracies, to occupy territories in the countries adjacent to the USSR for the construction of American military bases.
Atomic hysteria was accompanied by widespread propaganda of the inevitability of an atomic war and the invincibility of the United States in this war. The peoples of the world are under the immediate threat of a new atomic war, unprecedented in its destructive consequences.
Igor Kurchatov.
The interests of preserving peace forced the Soviet Union to create atomic weapons …
Among the propagandists of the new war there were many different "prophets" who argued that, they say, Soviet science and technology were not capable of solving the complex and difficult problem of obtaining atomic energy. The announcement of the first atomic explosion in the USSR in 1949 was a devastating blow to the instigators of a new war …
This collection is devoted to the glorious history of the implementation of the Stalinist plan for mastering atomic energy.
It summarizes the data that answer the question of why the Soviet Union managed in such a short time to solve the most difficult scientific and technical problems of mastering atomic energy and to overcome the gigantic difficulties that faced it on the way to the implementation of the atomic problem."
Were in the draft collection "History of mastering atomic energy in the USSR" and the following words:
“In the United States, the atomic problem is a big and profitable business. The atomic problem in the Soviet Union is not a business or a frightening one, but one of the greatest problems of our time … If it were not for the threat of an atomic attack and the need to create a reliable defense of the socialist state, all the forces of scientists and technicians would be directed to the use of atomic energy for the development of peaceful branches of the national economy …
In the USSR, the atomic bomb was created as a means of protection, as a guarantee of the further peaceful development of the country … In the USSR there are no groups that have interests different from the interests of the entire people.
In the United States, the atomic bomb is a means of enriching a handful of people, a nightmare, a curse for the people. The atomic bomb is a means of mass hysteria, leading people to nervous shocks and suicides.
The Soviet Union urgently needed to create its own atomic bomb and thereby ward off the impending threat of a new world war … The atomic bomb in the hands of the Soviet people is a guarantee of peace. Indian Prime Minister Nehru correctly assessed the significance of the Soviet atomic bomb, stating: "The significance of the atomic discovery can help prevent war."
The above text is an exposition of the official Soviet view on the problem of nuclear weapons already in the 1950s. In the West, the US atomic bomb was officially and openly viewed as a means of dictatorship, as a weapon for a completely possible nuclear strike against the USSR. The leadership of the Soviet Union immediately saw Soviet nuclear weapons as a factor of stabilization and containment of potential aggression.
And this is a historical fact!
How often today they try to present Stalin and Beria as some kind of moral monsters, soulless manipulators of the destinies of hundreds of millions of people, while they and their comrades-in-arms lived and worked for peace and creation. They were organically alien to destruction, death, war - in contrast to the present West and the United States, which cannot live without killing, without destroying, without suppressing the will and freedom of peoples.
INSTEAD OF DEARED GLORY - OBLIGATION
Alas, the collection on the history of mastering atomic energy in the USSR never became public, because with the arrest of Beria, the idea was buried, and the country never found out what great deed she had done, or the names of the heroes of the atomic epic. In the certificates of Heroes of Socialist Labor, issued to atomic weapons-makers even at the end of the 1950s, their photographs were absent, and in place of the photo there was a stamp “Really without a photo”.
The consequences of the stupid long-term super-closeness first manifested themselves during perestroika, when the country's main gunsmiths began to be publicly “branded” as “blind hawks”. We clean up this "mess" to this day. Russia still does not fully understand what a national value it is - its nuclear weapons-makers. And this is not understood, not least because during the reign of Nikita Khrushchev, the feat of the pioneers and their replacements actually fell silent. This happened, perhaps, because if excessive secrecy had been removed from the operation of the nuclear weapons complex, the name of Beria, hated by the Khrushchevites, would have surfaced in everyday conversations over and over again.
Beria himself did not engage in self-promotion, and in the voluminous, more than a hundred pages, rough sketches of the future open collection on the atomic history of the USSR, his name was mentioned only three times in purely official phrases.
Here are all of them:
1) “Based on the special nature of the task assigned to the country, Comrade Stalin (by the way, Stalin's name is also very rare and appropriate - author's note) entrusted his faithful and closest colleague Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria with the leadership of all work on the atomic problem. Comrade Beria L. P. was appointed Chairman of the Ad Hoc Committee."
2) “From the very first days of its activity, the Special Committee under the leadership of Comrade L. P. Beria led a broad front to organize and build new scientific institutions, design bureaus and experimental installations and expand the work of organizations previously involved in solving the atomic problem."
3) “On the progress of construction (of the first reactor - author's note) to comrade L. P. Beria was reported on a daily basis, measures of assistance were taken immediately."
And that's all there is in the collection about Beria.
At the same time, in "Materials …" to the collection, very complementary assessments are given to others: "Comrade Stalin's closest associate, Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Georgy Maximilianovich Malenkov", "the country's largest scientist in the field of nuclear physics, Academician I. Kurchatov”,“experienced business managers and talented engineers B. L. Vannikov, A. P. Zavenyagin, M. G. Pervukhin, V. A. Makhnev "," an experienced engineer and a wonderful organizer E. P. Slavsky "," energetic, knowledgeable engineer and good organizer A. S. Elyan ".
By the end of 1953, Beria intended to declassify all the major participants in Soviet atomic work - scientists, engineers, managers, and bring them into the circle of wide public attention! In "Materials …" dozens of names were mentioned, including those that became known in their own country only decades later!
A separate section was devoted to personnel training, and Stalin's thought organically entered the text: “The Russian revolutionary scale is that life-giving force that awakens thought, moves forward, breaks the past, gives perspective. No forward movement is possible without it."
It was a detailed portrait of the Atomic Project, and it is still an underpainted portrait.
RUSSIA DOES ITSELF
The names of M. V. Lomonosov, D. I. Mendeleev, V. I. Vernadsky, A. G. Stoletov, P. N. Lebedeva, N. A. Umova, P. P. Lazareva, D. S. Rozhdestvensky, L. S. Kolovrat-Chervinsky, L. V. Mysovsky, V. G. Khlopin, was quoted by the Russian chemist Beketov, who in 1875, in a textbook on inorganic chemistry, expressed the idea that if the fissility of an atom is discovered, then the processes associated with fission will be accompanied by a huge change in energy.
It was further reported that in pre-revolutionary Russia all physical work was concentrated in a few physics departments of higher educational institutions in modestly equipped laboratories, and the only Physics Research Institute was built in Moscow in 1912 with private donations. But after the October Revolution, the organization of a number of research institutes in physics began in Leningrad, Moscow, Kiev, Kharkov, and in 1933, at the first All-Union conference on the atomic nucleus, a number of Soviet physicists could already make reports on the main problems of nuclear physics.
The collection referred to the priorities of L. I. Mandelstam, M. A. Leontovich, V. I. Veksler, noted the pre-war works of I. E. Tamm, D. D. Ivanenko, I. V. Kurchatov, K. A. Petrzhak, G. N. Flerova, Yu. B. Khariton, Ya. B. Zeldovich, and then the conclusion was drawn: "Thus, the work of Soviet scientists by the beginning of the Patriotic War opened the fundamental possibility of using nuclear energy … Soviet science had in its hands the keys to solving the fundamental problems of mastering atomic energy."
In the United States, there were enough "specialists on the Russian question" who spoke of the "backwardness" of Soviet science. The head of the Manhattan Project, Major General Groves, declared in 1945: “Any other country will take 15-20 years to create an atomic bomb. Only those who have worked on the construction of nuclear plants … know how difficult it is and how almost impossible precision is required. Only they are also aware of the fact that the improper operation of some small part will put the plant out of operation for several months."
He was echoed by Ellsworth Raymond, a consultant on the Russian economy of the US Department of Defense, and John Hogerton, head of the technical information department of the Kellex Corporation: “Today, Soviet industry ranks second in the world, but this is not the same industry … Russian industry is mainly engaged in the production of heavy, rough equipment, like steel-making furnaces and steam locomotives … The branches of the Soviet industry that produce precision instruments are underdeveloped and produce low-quality products."
But sound voices were also heard. So, in the Soviet collection, in addition to the above, the opinions of the Harvard University professor Shapley and the director of General Electric research laboratories, Professor Langmuir, were cited.
Shapley in October 1945 at a meeting of the US Senate Commission reported that he was familiar with the scientific work of the Soviet Union for many years and was struck by the interest of the Soviet Union in science. Shapley called the progress of the Soviet Union excellent in the field of theoretical and scientific research.
Professor Langmuir in December 1945 also emphasized the great respect of the Russians for science and declared that Soviet scientists are superior to scientists all over the world in many processes.
There were grounds for such statements. For example, in a collection of documents and memoirs published in 2011 about one of the leading participants in the Soviet Atomic Project Lev Altshuler, an indicative fact is given. In 1946, while still working at the Institute of Chemical Physics, Yakov Zeldovich drew on the blackboard two schemes of implosion (an explosion directed inward). One was based on the compression of a ball of fissile material, and the second was based on the compression ("collapse") of a spherical shell of fissile material. Zeldovich invited Altshuler to estimate how the neutron range would change for both variants, and after the estimates it became clear that the shell variant is much better.
When Altshuler began working in Sarov at KB-11 in 1947, he immediately asked Chief Designer Yuliy Borisovich Khariton why a relatively ineffective version of simple compression of the ball, and not the shell, was chosen for our bomb? Khariton responded evasively, because he could not say that in order to avoid risk and in order to shorten the development time for our first experiment, the scheme of the American charge obtained by intelligence was chosen. But even then, KB-11 understood that the best design option was the third, shell-nuclear, combining the advantages of the first two.
And here is the second similar example (there are dozens, if not hundreds of them).
The first American atomic bomb (and, accordingly, our RDS-1) used an internal polonium-beryllium neutron source located in the center of the charge. But back in mid-1948, Zeldovich proposed using an external initiator of a neutron pulse ("neutron tube"), and although this option was actually tested only in the 1954 tests, work on it began a year before the RDS-1 test.
As you can see, Soviet physicists really thought quite independently.
At the same time, the authors of the draft collection and Beria himself were not embraced by leavened patriotism, and the draft collection directly spoke of the participation of German scientists in Soviet work on nuclear physics and radiochemistry:
“Among the German specialists who arrived in the summer of 1945.to work in the Soviet Union, there were prominent scientists: Nobel Prize laureate Professor Hertz, theoretical physicist Dr. Barvikh, specialist in the field of gas discharge Dr. Steinbeck, renowned physicochemist Professor Volmer, Dr. Schütze, professor of chemistry Thyssen, major designer in the field of electronic technology Ardenne, specialists in radiochemistry and rare elements Dr. Riehl, Dr. Wirtz and others.
Upon the arrival of German specialists in the Soviet Union, it was decided to build two more physical institutions …
In one of the institutes under the leadership of Ardenne (Manfred von Ardenne, one of the inventors of the electron microscope - author's note), Dr. Steinbeck and Professor Thyssen, already in 1945, the development of three different methods of separation of uranium isotopes began.
At another institute, at the same time, under the leadership of Professor Hertz and Dr. Barvikh, work began on the study of another method for separating uranium isotopes.
At the same institute, under the leadership of Dr. Schütze, the construction of a device important for physical research, a mass spectrometer, was started."
As you can see, Lavrenty Beria considered not only possible, but also necessary to officially recognize the fact of the participation of German specialists in the Soviet Atomic Project. After the murder of Beria, this topic remained shamefully and unworthily hidden, while in the West they knew about it, since all Germans by the mid-1950s. returned home, mainly to the Federal Republic of Germany. Moreover, there is reason to believe that Professor Steenbeck appropriated a number of our ideas and design solutions for gas centrifuges for uranium enrichment. But since the participation of Germans in atomic work in the USSR was not officially recognized, we could not present any claims.
Only in the 1990s. The "German trace" was made public in Russia, but in a different way - they say, the "Soviets" could not do without the "Varangians". The fact that in the United States the atomic problem (as well as the missile problem) was mainly solved by the "Varangians" was overlooked by the "researchers" of that time. In the USSR, the Germans did not play a leading role, and the largest practical contribution to the solution of the atomic problem was made by Professor Nikolaus Riehl, who was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor for this.
SURPRISING YOURSELF …
The data obtained by intelligence accelerated domestic work, and the time factor was then the most important. But, with all the merits of intelligence, success would not have been possible without the tremendous efforts of many people. To understand this, it is enough to get acquainted at least with extracts from Chapter IV of "Materials …" entitled "Difficulties in solving the atomic problem in a short time." What was told in it about the collective efforts of the Soviet people to create a new branch of the national economy and liquidate the US atomic monopoly is striking in its scope, dedication, and fantastic pace.
This dry information is convincing and expressive in itself, and before bringing it to the reader, I will only emphasize one point - most often overlooked today.
When Beria in 1950 met with the young physicist Sakharov, the future academician and three times Hero of Socialist Labor, Sakharov asked Beria a question - why, they say, are we lagging behind the United States? Beria patiently explained that in the United States dozens of companies are engaged in devices, and in our country everything rests on the Leningrad Electrosila. However, Beria did not remind that just a quarter of a century before this conversation (and four years fell on the war), the USSR actually did not have its own instrument-making industry. And it was not because tsarist Russia, while science-intensive industries were emerging in the United States and Europe, slept ineptly and criminally.
Indeed, without, for example, an ordinary (ordinary, if you know how to make it and have the equipment) micrometer, even an ordinary (ordinary, if you know how to make it and have the necessary equipment) navigator's chronometer cannot be made. What can we say about the atomic reactor and the automatic detonation of the atomic bomb!
Model of the world's first industrial nuclear power plant, launched on June 27, 1954 in Obninsk.
So, below are fragments of Chapter IV "Difficulties in solving the atomic problem in a short time" from the draft version of the collection on the history of mastering atomic energy in the USSR.
“Although the work of Soviet scientists, as mentioned above, established the fundamental possibilities of using nuclear energy, the practical use of this possibility was associated with colossal difficulties …
At the end of 1945, a little more than 340 physicists were working in the main physics institutes of the country, and about 140 physicists were engaged in nuclear physics, including young scientists who had just started working in the field of physics. These physicists worked in six research institutes.
In the field of radiochemistry at the end of 1945, only a little more than 100 people worked in 4 institutes. There was nothing to think about solving radiochemical problems of atomic energy with such a small number of specialists. It was necessary to create new scientific centers and gather people to solve these issues.
In the USA, when the atomic problem was being solved, specialists from all over the world were brought in. Whole teams of physicists from other countries took part in the work of the USA. These physicists brought all the results of their research to the USA.
At a meeting of the American Artillery Association in New York on December 5, 1951, the chairman of the US Atomic Commission G. Dean announced that 1200 physicists were working directly for the atomic energy program in the United States.
When solving the atomic problem, Russian scientists had to rely on their own strength.
Secondly, in order to practically start using atomic energy, it was necessary to urgently resolve the issue of raw materials and, first of all, of uranium ore.
In the United States, at the beginning of work in the field of atomic energy, there was already a significant amount of uranium ore. The United States had the world's most powerful radium mining industry long before World War II began. Three quarters of the world's radium production came from the United States.
In the Soviet Union, at the beginning of work on the atomic problem, there was only one uranium ore deposit (in Fergana). The uranium content in this ore was hundreds of times lower than that of ores processed at US factories. Thus, if by the beginning of work on atomic energy the United States was provided with uranium raw materials, then in the Soviet Union it was necessary to start with the search for uranium raw materials, with the organization of geological exploration for uranium.
Third, in addition to uranium ore, a number of new materials and chemicals were required.
First of all, graphite was needed with a high degree of purity, such a purity that no branch of industry in the Soviet Union knew. The production of graphite products has existed (in the world - author's note) since the end of the last century … In the Soviet Union, domestic graphite electrodes were first manufactured in 1936. Without high-purity graphite products, it was impossible to build nuclear boilers (nuclear reactors - author's note).
Fourthly, to create atomic units it was necessary to have heavy water. All information about the production of heavy water was available in the United States for many years before the start of work on the atomic problem. In the Soviet Union, it was necessary to begin this work with research on the study of methods for producing heavy water and methods for its control. It was necessary to develop these methods, create a cadre of specialists, and build factories. And all this can be done in a very short time.
Fifth, the production of pure uranium metal for nuclear power plants required very pure chemicals and reagents.
It was necessary to organize the production of metallic calcium, without which it was impossible to organize the production of uranium in metallic form.
Before the outbreak of World War II, there were only two calcium metal factories worldwide: one in France and one in Germany. In 1939, even before the occupation of France by the German army, the Americans, using technology obtained from France, built their own plant for the production of metallic calcium. There was no production of metallic calcium in the Soviet Union.
In the United States, there are more than a dozen companies engaged in the manufacture of chemically pure reagents and reagents. These firms include such concerns as DuPont de Nemours, Carbide & Carbon Corporation, associated with the German concern I. G. Farben-industry ".
The Soviet chemists were faced with the task of creating the production of dozens of chemicals of an exceptionally high degree of purity, which had never been manufactured in the country before. Soviet chemists had to solve this problem independently.
Sixth, the work of physicists, chemists, engineers required a wide variety of instruments. A lot of devices with a high degree of sensitivity and high accuracy were required.
The country's instrument-making industry has not yet recovered after the just-ended war with Nazi Germany. Instrument making in Leningrad, Moscow, Kharkov, Kiev and other cities has not yet been fully restored after the war years. The enormous destruction caused by the war did not make it possible to quickly obtain the necessary instruments from the factories. It was necessary to quickly restore the destroyed factories and build new ones.
New requirements for the accuracy of instruments created new difficulties, the industry had not previously produced such precise instruments. Many hundreds of devices had to be redesigned.
In the USA, a large number of companies were engaged in the design and manufacture of devices. Only 78 companies were engaged in the manufacture of instruments for measuring and controlling nuclear radiation in the United States.
Long-term relationships with instrument-making firms in Germany, England, France, Switzerland made it easier for US specialists to design new instruments.
The instrument-making industry of the Soviet Union in its development has lagged somewhat behind in comparison with other industries. This industry in the Soviet Union is the youngest industry.
Attempts to purchase devices abroad met with direct opposition from US government agencies. There was only one way out - to organize the development and manufacture of these devices in our country”.
The picture was supplemented and expanded by Chapter VII "Solving the Main Problems", with extracts from which it is also interesting to get acquainted. At the same time, one cannot fail to notice: how everything that had to be thrown into the solution of the atomic problem was useful in the national economy for the purely peaceful purposes of post-war reconstruction!
So:
1. Creation of a raw material base for uranium
a) Organization of extensive geological prospecting for the search for uranium ores
In the Soviet Union, at the beginning of work on the atomic problem, there was only one small deposit of uranium ore. In 1946, about 320 geological parties were engaged in the search for uranium deposits. By the end of 1945, geologists had already received the first instruments, and in mid-1952, the Ministry of Geology alone received over 7,000 radiometers and over 3,000 other radiometric instruments.
Until the middle of 1952, the Ministry of Geology alone received from industry (only for geological exploration work on uranium and thorium - author's note) over 900 drilling rigs, about 650 special pumps, 170 diesel power plants, 350 compressors, 300 oil engines, 1650 cars, 200 tractors and many other equipment.
b) Construction of mining enterprises and uranium enrichment plants
Until 1945, there was only one mining enterprise in the USSR that was engaged in the extraction of uranium ore. Mining enterprises received 80 mobile power plants, 300 mine lifts, over 400 rock loading machines, 320 electric locomotives, about 6,000 vehicles. More than 800 units were transferred for concentration plants. various chemical technological equipment.
As a result, mining and processing plants have become exemplary enterprises.
2. Solution of the problem of obtaining pure uranium
Obtaining pure uranium is an extremely difficult technical problem. In his book Atomic Energy for Military Purposes, Smith writes that "this task was one of the most difficult for America and required the involvement of large specialists and a number of firms for a long time."
The difficulty in obtaining pure metallic uranium is explained by the fact that the content of the most harmful impurities in uranium, which inhibit or stop nuclear reactions, is allowed no more than a millionths of a percent. Already negligible proportions of harmful impurities make uranium unsuitable for use in a nuclear boiler.
Until 1945, there were not only highly sensitive methods for the determination of impurities in uranium, but there were also no necessary reagents to carry out such delicate analytical work. Many new reagents were required, which had never been manufactured before. For work on uranium, more than 200 different reagents and more than 50 different chemical reagents of high purity were needed with the content of some elements not exceeding one millionth and even up to one billionth of a percent. In addition to the fact that high-purity chemicals were needed, the production of which had to be reorganized, completely new equipment was needed for all chemical processes.
Most of the materials commonly used in chemical engineering turned out to be unsuitable for these purposes. Conventional stainless steel grades were not suitable.
Pure argon and metallic calcium were needed to produce uranium metal. Until 1945, the USSR had a small production of argon, but this argon contained a large amount of nitrogen and could not be used to melt uranium.
There was absolutely no production of metallic calcium in the Soviet Union. A new original technology for the production of high-purity calcium metal was developed by the workers of the uranium plant and introduced into production at the same plant.
The industrial production of uranium fluoride was unthinkable without the production of pure fluorine. There was no industrial production of fluorine in the country.
It was necessary to create new brands of glass for chemical glassware and apparatus, new brands of enamels, new materials for crucibles and molds for melting and casting uranium, as well as new compositions of plastics that are resistant to aggressive environments.
The question of furnaces for melting uranium was acute. There was nowhere to get such ovens. Vacuum furnaces were built in the United States, but the United States government banned the sale of such furnaces to the Soviet Union.
Since 1945, the Electropech Trust has created 50 different types of electric furnaces."
Not all of those who worked for the Atomic Project knew that they were working for it, and if the Soviet analogue of Smith's book were published openly, the country would be surprised at itself - it turns out that we were able to do it ourselves, in such timing and so powerful!
I will cite just a part of the information reported in the unpublished "Soviet Smith". For example, to separate uranium-235 from natural uranium and obtain almost pure uranium-235, it is necessary to repeat the enrichment process several thousand times, and in the diffusion method of isotope separation, uranium hexafluoride must be repeatedly passed through fine-pore filters with pore sizes of no more than one micron. And such filters have been created.
It was necessary to create vacuum pumps and other vacuum equipment, and in the USSR, until the end of 1945, the development of research work on vacuum technology was limited by a very weak base of two laboratories.
Some vacuum gauges of various types were required only for one 1947, more than 3 thousand.units, foreline pumps - over 4, 5 thousand, high-vacuum diffusion pumps - over 2 thousand units. Required special high-vacuum oils, putties, vacuum-tight rubber products, vacuum valves, valves, bellows, etc.
And in the USSR, powerful high-vacuum units were created with a capacity of 10-20 and 40 thousand liters per second, superior in power and quality to the latest American samples.
It was required to install about eight thousand different kinds of devices, including completely new ones, on one nuclear reactor alone. And from 1946 to 1952. Soviet instrument-making plants manufactured 135,500 new-design instruments and more than 230,000 standard instruments for work in the field of atomic energy.
Along with control and measuring devices, a series of special manipulators was developed and manufactured that reproduced the movements of human hands and made it possible to perform delicate and complex operations.
These epoch-making works, which changed the scientific and technical appearance of the USSR, could not be carried out without new personnel, and by 1951, special faculties of higher educational institutions were able to train over 2,700 specialists, including 1,500 physicists of various specialties.
NEW PROBLEM - NEW SCIENTIFIC BASE
The draft collection not only briefly outlined - without disclosing the location, the history of the creation of Laboratory No. 2 of the USSR Academy of Sciences and "a powerful technological institute for uranium and plutonium - NII-9", but even reported that "for the development of the design of atomic bombs" organized "as part of highly qualified specialists - scientists and designers - a special design bureau KB-11".
And further it was said:
“The organization of a design bureau for atomic weapons turned out to be a very difficult matter. In order to fully develop work on the design, manufacture and preparation of tests of the atomic bomb, it was necessary to carry out numerous calculations, research and experiments. Calculations and research required the highest precision and accuracy. Any mistake in calculations, research in conducting experiments threatened the greatest catastrophe.
The need for numerous studies and experiments with explosions, considerations of secrecy, as well as the need for close regular communication between KB-11 workers with other research organizations, complicated the choice of a site for the construction of KB-11.
The closest one of these requirements was met by one of the small factories, remote from settlements and having sufficient production space and housing stock to start the first works.
It was decided to rebuild this plant as a design bureau for the specified purposes."
The deployment of KB-11 (since 1966 - All-Union Research Institute of Experimental Physics in "Arzamas-16" -Kremlev, now - Sarov, Nizhny Novgorod region) even in the 1970-1980s. was one of the most secret secrets of the USSR, although by that time it was Openel's secret for the West.
The very mention in open conversations about KB-11 in the 1950-1970s. was unacceptable in the USSR, although it was clear that such an organization should exist in the USSR. Beria, on the other hand, looked at the question reasonably - without revealing the place where KB-11 is located, it is necessary to say in an open essay, within the limits of the possible, about its work.
The collection also presented an impressive description of the prospects for the development of work in the field of studying the atomic nucleus and nuclear reactions. It reported that in February 1946 the government decided to build a powerful cyclotron, providing protons with an energy of half a billion electron volts, designed to serve all the main institutes and laboratories working in the field of nuclear physics.
The American cyclotron at Berkeley was then regarded in world literature as one of the remarkable structures of our time, and the authors of the collection proudly noted that the Soviet cyclotron surpassed the American one not only in the size of an electromagnet, but also in the energy of accelerated particles, and in its technical perfection.
“Of the buildings erected by the builders,” the collection reported, “the main building, in which the electromagnet is located, should be especially noted. This building is a monolithic reinforced concrete structure up to 36 meters high with walls two meters thick”. Soviet cyclotron (installation "M") with an electromagnet weight of about 7 thousand.tons was built in the area of the Ivankovskaya hydroelectric power station, 125 km from Moscow. Work on the entire complex was completed in December 1949, but in the spring of 1952 it was decided to reconstruct the M installation to increase the proton energy up to 650-680 million electron-volts.
Today it is difficult to believe that such tasks and at such times were accomplished on the same land on which we now walk.
The project of the collection also talked about the construction of a powerful electron accelerator - a synchrotron, based on the principle of autophasing, proposed in 1943-1944. Soviet physicist Vladimir Veksler.
The permissible deviations in the manufacture of the synchrotron magnet should not have exceeded tenths of a percent, otherwise the accelerator would have stopped working, but the creation of a chamber for accelerating electrons turned out to be an equally difficult task. There was no experience in the manufacture of this kind of porcelain products, allowing to obtain a high vacuum, in the USSR, and this task was solved by the team of the porcelain factory. Lomonosov.
But even before the launch of this largest synchrotron at the Physics Institute. P. N. Lebedev of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in October 1949, an intermediate electron accelerator "S-25" for 250 MeV was launched.
On May 2, 1949, the Resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR was adopted on the construction of a powerful ring proton accelerator - a synchrophasotron, with an energy of 10 billion electron-volts! Started with development under the supervision of Beria, it was commissioned on December 5, 1957.
The concluding chapter described the development of work on the use of atomic energy for the needs of the national economy of the USSR and gave an impressive prospect of using the capabilities of the new - atomic - branch of the economy for purely national economic and social needs.
At the beginning of the article, it was already noted that Russia, as a society, has not yet read its atomic history in the way that our current situation requires. The accomplishments of past generations are both a reproach for us, but, at the same time, an example. With this statement, the author ends his article, one of the goals of which was not only to tell about the accomplishments of the past, but also to orient compatriots towards the accomplishments of the future.
